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ays of the Son of Man 


A Series of Sermons on the 
Great Days of the Christian Year 
by the Rev. W. Macxintoso Mackay, 


D.D., Sherbrooke Church, Glasgow Author of 
“ Bible Types of Modern Men,” etc. @o @ 


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TO 
MY PRESENT CONGREGATION 


WHOSE LOYALTY AND LOVE 
HAVE NEVER FAILED 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/daysofsonofmanse0Omack 


INTRODUCTORY 


THESE studies, undertaken at the friendly sugges- 
tion of a clergyman of the Church of England, 
may, it is hoped by their author, do something 
to advance the movement which is going on in 
all our churches towards a wider recognition of 
the great festivals of the Christian Year. Such 
recognition is surely to be commended, not only 
because it is in line with the Spirit of Him Who 
“ desired with desire to eat the Passover before 
He suffered,” but also because it brings the 
_ preacher in contact with the great themes of our 
Christian Faith. 

There is perhaps a tendency to-day to dwell 
mote on the fringe of revelation than on its 
great central verities. This is not always, or 
even we believe usually, due to any lack of 
faith in these. It is rather caused by the difi- 


culty of making them fresh and living in their 
7 


8 INTRODUCTORY 


interest to the people to whom they ate ad- 
dressed. It is hoped that these studies may 
in some small degree help those who ate thus 
embarrassed and bring them, by facing tasks 
which at first seem difficult, the great reward 
of finding that they are thereby led into closer 
contact with the Master Himself and made not 
only His preachers but His teachers as well. 

Matthew Arnold has pointed out in one of 
his essays that the great days of the Christian 
Year are all historical anniversaries, commemota- 
ting either the days of the Son of Man in His 
earthly or in His exalted life. The only excep- 
tion to this rule, he says, is that of Trinity Sun- 
day, which, he adds, should be kept as a Fast 
Day, “for the aberrations of Theological dog- 
matists.” 

Without at all agreeing with the critic’s char- 
acteristic hit at doctrinal religion, there is no 
doubt that his general observation is acute and 
correct. The great days of the Christian Year 
ate very largely “‘ days of the Son of Man”; 
and hence an observance of them, not only, as 
Phillips Brooks has remarked, gives variety to 


INTRODUCTORY 9 


the Christian Message but concentrates it from 
time to time on themes which no faithful preacher 
can evade. And, as we have indicated when 
such a task is faithfully undertaken, it meets with 
an abundant reward. Personally, if we may be 
permitted the reference, we have often been 
thanked for such pronouncements and some- 
times the remark has been added, “‘I wish we 
heatd sermons on subjects like that more often 
than we do.” 

While, however, these studies are thus chiefly 
concerned with the great truths which gather 
round the Incarnation of our blessed Lord and the 
perpetuation of His work by the Holy Spirit, we 
have ventured to add one ot two sermons preached 
on special occasions of a different kind, which 
we trust may be helpful in a more general way. 

The Author has once again to express his 
warm thanks to the Rev. Kenneth B. Macleod, 
B.A., White Memorial Church, Glasgow, for 
helping in the revision of the proofs. 

W. MACKINTOSH MACKAY. 


GLASGOW, 
1926. 


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TABLE ;OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 
LiFe’s MippLE WATCHES : F Pvc te 
_ (For Advent) 
““And if he shall come in the second 
watch, or come in the third watch, and find 
them so” (watching), “blessed are those 
servants. ’—LUKE xil. 38. 
THE DAYSPRING . : : ‘ i 40 
(For Christmas Day) 
“Through the tender mercy of our God ; 
. the dayspring from on high hath visited 
us.”’—ST. LUKE 1. 78. 
THE WONDERFUL CHILD , vane 
(For the First Sunday after Chas) 
“For unto us a child is born; .. . and 
his name shall be called Wonderful.”— 
IsAIAH ix. 6. 
Our Litre LIFE . : ‘ ; 58 | 


(For the Close of the eur 


“The time past of our life.’—1 PETER 
vous: 
11 


“ TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 


V Tue CyristiAN MARINER’S COMPASS Bory; 
(For the New Year) 


“In all thy ways acknowledge him, and 
he shall direct thy paths.”—PRov. iil. 6. 


VI THe Contrasts OF PALM SUNDAY . ve ae 
(For Palm Sunday) 


“* Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy 
King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon 
an ass.”—ST. MATT. xxi. 5. 


VII THE GRoupPs AROUND THE Cross . . febOU 
(For Good Friday) 


““And sitting down, they watched him 
there.’—ST. MATT. xxvii. 36. 


VIII THE GARDEN OF SORROW AND VICTORY. II4 
(For Good Friday) 
“* Now in the place where he was crucified 
there was a garden; and in the garden a 


new sepulchre. . . . There laid they Jesus.” 
—ST. JOHN xix. 41, 42. ' 


TX SEEKING CHRIST IN THE WRONG PLACE. 125 
(For Easter Day) 


“Why seek ye the living among the 
dead ?”’—StT. LUKE xxiv. 5. 


X THE YounGc MAN at THE Empty Toms. 138 
(For Easter Day) 
“Entering into the sepulchre, they saw a 


young man sitting on the right side, clothed 
in a long white garment.” —ST. MARK Xvi. 5. 


XI 


XII 


XII 


XIV 


XV 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


THE FoRBIDDEN TOUCH 
(For Ascensiontide) 


** Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for 
I am not yet ascended.”—ST. JOHN xx. 
tt 


THE SECRET OF POWER. x : 
(For Whitsunday) 
** Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until 


ye be endued with power from on high.”— 
ST. LUKE xxiv. 49. 


WANTING IS—WHAT? . : 
(For Whitsunday) 


“Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when 
ye believed ?”—ActTs xix. 2 (R.V.). 


THE BENEDICTION OF THE Hoty TRINITY 
(For Trinity Sunday) 

** The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 

the love of God, and the communion of 


the Holy Ghost, be with you all.’’—2z Cor. 
Xlll. 14, 


THE ROSE IN THE HEART 
(For a Flower Service) 
““T am the Rose of Sharon.”—THE SONG 


OF SOLOMON il. I. 
““T have you in my heart.”—PHIL. i. 7. 


13 
PAGE 
151 


165 


aad 


209 


14 


XVI 


XVII 


XVIII 


XIX 


XX 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST e 
(For a Harvest Festival) 


<< Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of 
the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth 
to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life ever- 
lasting.’ —GAL. vi. 7, 8. 


Curist’s CALL TO REST . 
(Before Communion) 


‘““Come ye yourselves apart into a desert 
place, and rest a while.’—ST. Mark vi. 31. 


THE CENOTAPH OF JESUS 
(Before Communion) 


“This do in remembrance of me.’—ST. 
LUKE XxXil. 19. 


Love’s ‘TENSES 
(Before Communion) 

“Unto him that loveth us and loosed us 
from our sins by his blood; and he made 
us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his 
God and Father; to him be the glory.” 
—REV. i. 5, 6 (R.V.). 


Worry. : ; : : 
(For the Close of a Holiday Season) 


“Fret not thyself, it tendeth only to 
evil-doing.”—PsaLM xxxvii. 8 (R.V.). 


PAGE ~ 


220 


235 


249 


262 


274 


I 
LIFE’S MIDDLE WATCHES 
(4n Advent Sermon) 


“ And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third 
watch, and find them so” (watching), ‘‘ blessed are those servants.” 
—ST. LUKE xii. 38. 

BEYOND question the most striking feature of 
this parable is to be found in this verse, where 
our Lord adds a special blessing to those who 
ate found watching in the second or third 
watches. Why single out these for His peculiar 
benediction? ‘The question is interesting, and 
the answer to it contains, I think, a deep truth 
of the spiritual life. 

The Roman night, as you know, was divided 
into four watches. The first watch began with 
sunset and was called the evening watch. The 
second and third were more properly the night 
watches, for they lasted through the long dark 


hours before and after midnight. The fourth 
15 


16 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


watch was the herald of the dawn, and except 
in winter was largely lightened by the streaks 
of coming day. 

If we consider these things we shall see the 
significance of the Master’s commendation of 
those who ate watching in the second and third 
watches. It is obviously this, that it was more 
difficult to be faithful then. 

The tedium of the first watch was lightened 
by the memory of the day that was just gone 
and the hopes of a good rest when it was over. 
The darkness of the fourth watch was cheered 
by the rays of coming day. But those who were — 
called to stand on guard during the second and 
third periods had a task more difficult. They 
were neither defended by the past nor inspired 
by the future. They were summoned from a 
couch, warm with comfort, and half drowsy with 
insufficient repose. They had to stand in the 
cold when the night was coldest; in the dark — 
when the darkness was deepest. To those who 
were found faithful then, the Master’s commen- 
dationis most hearty. ‘‘ And if he shall come in | 
the second watch, or come in the third watch, and 


LIFES MIDDLE WATCHES 17 


find them so, blessed are those servants. Verily 
I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and 
make them to sit down to meat, and will come 
forth and serve them.” 

Such is the benediction of our text. And 
now what is the implication suggested by it? 
Surely, it is this, that there are certain times when 
it is more difficult to be faithful than at others. 
The special commendation points to a special 
merit and the special merit to a peculiar diffi- 
culty. So our subject to-day may be entitled :— 

“ Life’s Middle Watches and their peculiar diffi- 
culty.” 

It is a common saying that the beginning of 
a thing is its most critical part. “ Well begun 
is half done.” No doubt this is partly true. 
The beginning of any enterprise is full of diffi- 
culties; but it is not on that account fraught 
-with danger. On the contrary the greatness of 
the difficulties constitutes the littleness of the 
dangers. The very fact that the beginner has 
more problems to face makes him therefore 
mote cateful and the result is that he seldom 


fails then. A man’s weakness becomes his 
2 


18: DAYS OF ‘THE-6ON DOF AiuARy 


strength because it throws him back upon him- 
self and we never know what is in us till our 
back is to the wall. Or better still, it may throw 
us back on God, and when a man stands there 
he can never fail. 

Perhaps there was no time when it was mote 
difficult to be a Christian than in the early years 
of Christianity, when to the hatred of the Jew 
was added the ridicule of the Greek and the 
intolerance of the Roman ; when the philosopher 
said, “ What will this babbler say?” and the 
judge presented the young disciple with the 
awful alternative to “ Worship the Emperor ”’ 
or “Feed the lions.’ . Yet; thetegwassnoussuc 
when Christian faith reached so high as then ; 
when the Church went on from triumph to 
triumph, until in three centuries she had con- 
quered the world. But when the first watch 
was over and the long dark ages marked the 
second and the third, how few were found 
faithful! ‘Then indeed the iniquity of many 
abounded, and the love of the few waxed cold. 


So too in the individual life; when a man 


LIFE’S MIDDLE WATCHES 19 


begins the Christian race he does so with an 
atdour and enthusiasm which conquers every 
temptation and surmounts every trial; but 
this enthusiasm usually lasts only for a time. 
As Christ says of the seed sown in thorny 
ground,“ the cares of this world’’ and “‘the deceit- 
fulness of riches” often choke the Word and it 
becomes unfruitful. In that parable you will 
remember there were three kinds of sowing 
which proved a failure. One of these, which 
the fowls carried away as soon as it was sown, 
may well represent those who failed in the first 
watch. On the other hand, that which fell on 
rocky ground and that which was sown among 
the thorns as clearly point to the failures of the 
second and third watches. Both these promised 
a tich harvest at the first, but alas! they soon 
fell away. ‘The sun of evil passion and the 
thorns of worldliness destroyed the promise of 
May. For one found lacking in the first, there 
were two who failed in the second and the third 
watches. ‘The lesson clearly is that the perils 
of the Christian life are not chiefly to be found 
at the beginning of it. It is in the after days 


20” “DAYS OR VTHE SON OR Myriam 


that faith is most tested and patience shows her 
perfect work. 

Peter’s fall is a striking illustration of the 
truth of this law. “‘ Master, though all shall 
be offended in Thee, yet will not I,” he con- 
fidently affirmed at the beginning of that long 
night of our Lord’s trial! And at first our 
Lord’s prophecy of his ultimate failure seemed 
far enough off from fulfilment. See that flashing 
sword in the garden of betrayal! Others may 
fly, but Peter stands firm. Yes; in the first 
watch Simon is faithful. But see, how the long 
hours wear out the keenness of that braggart 
steel. See him as he follows now so far off. 
See him as he stands among the servants in the 
High Priest’s hall, so weak and timorous in his 
testimony that no one knows what he is. The 
second watch is already telling upon his faith 
and oozing the courage out of his soul. But 
now the third watch is passing by. Soon his trial 
will be over. Soon the dawn will be breaking 
upon the hills, telling that the long night of 
temptation is past. Soon the “trumpeter of 
morn ” will be sounding his shrill clarion of the 


LIPE’S’ MIDDLE) WATCHES 21 


dawn—yes, but not until Simon has fallen miser- 
ably before The Tempter’s power. “* And if he 
come in the second watch, or if he come in the 
third watch, and find them so, blessed are those 
servants’; but if He come and find them cursing 
and swearing and saying, “I know not the 
man,” ah then the fourth watch will sound only 
on a sleeping soul! 

There is a striking picture which represents 
Napoleon surprising a sleeping sentry. He has 
gone round his camp by night on the eve per- 
haps of a great battle and has come on this man 
prone upon the ground in profound uncon- 
sciousness. Instead of wakening him up, he just 
takes his musket which he has left lying on the 
eround and mounts guard himself, looking down 
from time to time with a grim look on the faith- 
less soldier. During one of these looks, the 
soldier suddenly awakes and you can see the 
terrible look of agony in his face as he starts up 
to see his great Commander looking down upon 
him. So the Lord looked on Peter in the hour 
of his betrayal and so He looks on many still. 
Beware of the dangers of the second and the 


22, DAYS‘OF THE SON: OF “MAN 


thitd watches! It is in these that the ranks of 
God’s soldiers ate most thinned. It is in these 
that the fidelity of the faithful servant is most 
revealed. 


But the principle underlying our text may be 
broadened from individual instances to the 
whole of life. Life may be likened to a night of 
four watches. ‘There is first the watch of child- 
hood, then that of youth, then that of manhood 
and mid-life and last of all the watch of life’s 
declining years. Now of these four watches of 
life, the principle of our text is also true. The 
most dangerous watches of life are its middle 
watches. 

The dangers of youth are so obvious that 
they may be almost called a commonplace of the 
pulpit. One feels a reluctance in repeating what 
has been said so often. And yet their familiarity 
constitutes perhaps one of their dangers. We 
call it “ Parson’s talk,” something not to be 
taken seriously. But it is true talk nevertheless, 
and 1 only wish I could make it so real to you 
now, that you might realize it in your deepest 


LIFR’S ‘MIDDLE WATCHES 23 


soul as something not to betrifledaway. Youth’s 
hot passion; youth’s dangerous curiosity ;— 
these are the temptations of life’s second watch 
and how many there are who are fatally injured 
by them | 

In his fine essay on Burns, Carlyle has spoken 
memorable words about the dangers of life’s 
second watch. Perhaps some of you who will 
not listen to me, will be more ready to take it 
from him. “ There are some,” he says, “ who 
declare vice to be the natural preparative for 
manhood, a kind of mud-bath, in which a youth 
must steep himself before the toga of manhood 
can be laid upon him. Itisnotso. We become 
men, not after we have been dissipated and 
disappointed in the chase after false pleasures 
but after we have ascertained what impassible 
barriers hem us in through life, how mad it is to 
hope for contentment to our infinite soul from 
the gifts of this extremely finite world; that a 
man must be sufficient in himself and that for 
suffering and sorrowing there is no remedy but 
striving and doing.” 

Yes, manhood begins in the power to say 


24° DAYS OF “THE ASON TOR ayia 


““Nol??. Watcher of the second watchipune 
vigilant! Your enemy like a roaring lion goeth 
about seeking to devour you! What I say unto 
all I say specially unto you, “Watch!” Be 
faithful in the second watch and then you will 
have gained half of life’s battle and won half of 


life’s crown. 


Half? » Yes; but not the whole; for note 
the words which follow, “ and if he come in the 
third watch.” Itis the watch of middle life and as 
hatd to be faithful there as any other. We hear 
a great deal about the dangers of youth and but 
little of those of middle life. Yet if we were to 
count life’s shipwrecks I believe we would find 
as many in the shoals of the thirties and the forties 
as on the rocks of the teens and the twenties. 

What are the dangers of the third watch? 
They may be described as a general drowsiness 
of soul, an ebbing of the moral enthusiasms of 
youth, a coarsening and materializine of the 
idealisms of opening life and above all an ebb- 
tide of faith which are so often seen in middle 
age. ‘The moral and spiritual springs of life 


TIFR’S MIDDLE WATCHES 25 


run low. A man dwindles into a money-making 
machine or a worshipper of his belly. A woman 
becomes an ease-loving votary of pleasure and 
fashion or a household drudge whose soul has 
shrivelled up to a duster. 

You can see the victim of the third watch in 
what is known as nominal Christianity, the man 
who has a name to live but whose soul is dead. 
There was a time when his faith kindled with 
enthusiasm for Christ and the Church and he 
gave much of his money and sacrificed much of 
his time for the spread of the Gospel and the 
uplift of his fellows; but now his visits to the 
Church are few and far between. He prefers to 
spend the Sunday in an easy chair with the latest 
magazine or novel, or in a ride in a motor-car. 
He has fallen asleep. His loins are no longer 
girt. His lamp is no longer burning. Uncon- 
scious pethaps to himself, he has become a 
victim of what Bunyan calls “the enchanted 
ground.” He has fallen asleep in the third 
watch. 

I remember once hearing an incident told by 
a professor of Psychology. He was illustrating 


26. ‘DAYS OF ;} THE VON OR VMAs 


the power of somnambulism. He told of a man 
who rose in his sleep from his bed and went 
down the stair to the door of his cottage and 
still he slept. He opened the door and stepped 
out into the street of the village where he dwelt 
and still he slept. He passed out into the silent 
country and still he slept. Not until his naked 
feet touched the cold waters of a stream that 
trickled across the toad did he waken to the 
darkness of the night and the strange unfamiliar 
scene. 

So in our churches there are men who sleep 
on through the strangest and most awakening 
experiences. The preacher tries to waken them 
with the message of the Apostle, “ Awake thou 
that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ 
shall give thee light.” But stillthey sleep, God 
rings His warning bell by many an experience 
of joy ot sorrow in their life but still they sleep, 
Not until their feet reach the cold river of death 
will they waken to the darkness of a life that is 
lost and the morning of a Judgment day. 

One of the great lessons which the Advent 
Season, on which we have now entered, would 


LIFE’S MIDDLE WATCHES de | 


teach us is that Christ is coming. It was a lesson 
that was deeply impressed on the early Church. 
I fear it has grown too dim in ours. But it is 
a true lesson nevertheless. Christ is coming to 
His Church again; not as He came at the first 
as a little Child but as our King and Judge, to 
subdue all things to Himself. And the duty of 
you and me is that we should live under the 
influence of this promise, that we should be 
watchful and vigilant, not knowing when He 
will come but ready when He does so to say, 
“Even so come Lord Jesus, come quickly.” 
That coming may take place at the end of the 
world or it may take place at the end of our life ; 
but whenever it be, it will take place. Christ 
will come to us and say—What? If we are 
found watching, if we are found faithful, “ Come, 
ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of the 
world.” ‘ Well done, good and faithful ser- 
vant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” 
How great the blessedness of such a faithful 
servant! Christ Himself has described it in 
language so exalted that I dare only quote it and 


28°) (DAYS OF vTHE SGN NORE 


leave it to explain itself. “ Verily I say unto 
you He shall gird Himself and make them to sit 
down to meat and come forth and serve them.” 

What these wonderful words mean in all their 
fullness I do not pretend to understand. They 
have no doubt an immediate reference to Christ’s 
first Communion when the Master girded Him- 
self with a towel and washed the disciples’ feet 
ete He sat down with the twelve to supper ; but 
their real reference is to the greater and grander 
Communion with His people above, “‘ the Lamb’s 
ereat bridal feast of light and love”; when 
Christ shall welcome not the twelve only, but 
“ten thousand times ten thousand ” to the joy 
and the peace of His eternal fellowship. 

Meanwhile let us be watchful, watchful at all 
times but specially in life’s middle watches. 
And if it is difficult to be vigilant at such hours, 
let us remember this, that Christ is watching us 
as well; not with malevolent eye as Napoleon 
scanned the sleeping soldier, but with love and 
sympathy and that He will come to those who 
seek His aid when the night is darkest and the 
need is sorest. 


LIFE’S MIDDLE WATCHES 29 


That is a beautiful touch in the story of the 
night-storm in Galilee, where it is said, “‘ And 
about the fourth watch He came unto them”’; 
not at it but about it; while the third watch 
lingered still. When the night was darkest and 
the need was greatest Christ came to them. 

So Christ ever comes to those who look for 
Him in their hour of trial. He is never so near 
us as when we need Him most. Only one thing 
is needed, that while we watch we should also 
pray, pray that ours may be the strength to 
endure to the end. 


““ Hear we the Shepherd’s voice, 
‘Pray, brethren, pray!’ 
Would ye His heart rejoice P 
Pray, brethren, pray. 
Weakness needs the strong One near, 
Long as ye struggle here ; 
Pray, brethren, pray!” 


IT 


WHE SDAY SERING 
(For Christmas) 


“Through the tender mercy of our God; .. + the dayspring 
from on high hath visited us.”—-ST. LUKE 1. 78. 
THE coming of Jesus into our World is pro- 
claimed in our text to be the dawning of a new 
day in human history. ‘The prophecy has been 
abundantly fulfilled. Whatever views men take 
about Christ’s person, it will be admitted by 
the vast proportion of civilized men, that since 
His advent, the world has taken a new start. 
It was by a true instinct that men have changed 
the Calendar in reference to that humble event 
which took place two thousand years ago, and 
one is safe to say it is a correction that will 
nevet be revised. 3B.c. and a.p. will remain 
till the end of time a monument of the greatness 


of the Man of Nazareth. 
30 


THE DAYSPRING 31 


The Father of the Forerunner is therefore 
tight when he says of this lowly event, ‘ The 
dayspring from on high hath visited us.”” And he 
is so, not only because of the significance of 
the event itself, but because of the manner in 
which it took place. There are three ways to 
my mind in which the Dayspring suggests the 
Coming of Jesus into human history, first of 
all in its Beauty, secondly in its Quietness, and 
thirdly fin its Power. Let us dwell on these 
thoughts briefly on this Christmas day. 


I. Christ’s coming was like the Dayspring i 
its Beauty. There are few things more beautiful 
in Nature than a lovely Dawn. Its only rival is 
perhaps the Sunset. Each has its own charm 
and merits alike the eulogy of the Psalmist, 
“Thou makest the outgoings of the Morning 
Bidmthe ivenina’ to» -tejoice.”’ » Yet /each | 4s 
different from the other in its colours and the 
difference of colour is reflective of a difference 
of spirit. The colours of the morning sky are 
as a tule brighter than those of the evening. 
Homer speaks of the “ rosy-fingered daughter 


32): DANS (OF: THESSONG OF iia 


2 


of morn,” and this is a true description. The 
white clouds of the dawn take on a most exqui- 
site rose pink, and its rays spreading with 
streamers all over the sky have the appearance 
of a gigantic hand stretching fingers flushed 
with life across the dark brow of night. 

The colours again of the sunset are usually 
deeper; tich crimsons and burning gold. They 
ate often more beautiful than those of dawn. 
But they lack the spirit of wonder and hope 
which characterizes the dawn. ‘They are pen- 
sive and even sad; reminiscent of a glory 
that has gone, prophetic of a darkness that is 
coming. 

To both the Dawn and the Sunset the life 
of Christ may be likened. In His life there 
was both a beauty of the Sunrise and the Sun- 
set. For beautiful as the rays of the Sun of 
Righteousness were when they shone forth in 
the zenith of His strength, they never shone 
out with such glory as when they set behind 
the blood-stained Hill of Calvary. But we are 
specially speaking to-day of the beauty of 
Christ’s opening life. That beauty was like 


THE DAYSPRING 33 


that of the morning, fresh and unexpected in 
its charm. He did not come as men expected. 
They looked for a conqueror. He came as an 
infant. As George MacDonald puts it :— 
“They were all looking for a king, 
To slay their foes and lift them high: 


Thou cam’st a little baby thing, 
That made a woman cry.” 


Yet, when the world had time to think it 
out, it came to see that the “‘ foolishness of 
God ” was “wiser than men ”’ and that there was 
nothing more suitable and more beautiful than 
that the Lord of Glory should come to earth 
in the form of an infant of days, that “it became 
Him”? when He stooped to take upon Himself 
the form of a servant that He should do so in 
the humbleness and weakness and yet also in 
the purity and hopefulness of a little child. 

And since His day Childhood has taken on 
a new attractiveness and a new sacredness. 
Before His coming “there were,” as one has 
said, “no children, only undeveloped men and 
despised little women.” But when He came, 


the whole thought of childhood was elevated 
3 


34°. DAYS OF “VHEN SONG @EEMiaas 


and glorified and men learned to say with 
Wordsworth :— 
“Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 


But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God Who is our home.” 


Christ came with the beauty and hopefulness 
of a little child to this dark world and taught 
all men to see in His Cradle the hopes of a new 
and better day for the human race. He was 
truly “the Dayspring from on high.” When 
God was manifest in the flesh as a little child 
He came in the beauty of the Dawn. 


II. Once again Christ’s coming was like the 
Dayspring in that s¢ was very gentle in its approach. 

How quietly steals the light upon the Eastern 
sky! Morning does not herald its approach 
like the Lightning or the Storm by premonitory 
signs. It comes quietly, so quietly that you 
can hardly tell when it has arrived, when the 
first streaks of light begin to unbare to you 
the forms and colours of the sleeping land- 
scape. 


THE DAYSPRING 35 


Tennyson has a fine description of the quiet- 
ness of the dawn :— 
“from out the distant gloom 
A breeze began to tremble o’er 


The dark leaves of the sycamore 
And fluctuate ali the still perfume ; 


And gathering freshlier overhead, 
Rocked the full-foliaged elms and swung 
The heavy folded tose and flung 

The lilies to and fro and said,— 


‘The dawn! the dawn!’ and died away. 
And East and West, without a breath, 
Mixt their dim lights like life and death 
To broaden into boundless day.” 
And such was the rising of the Sun of Righteous- 
Pesswre tie (id vnot strive snot icty nor lift 
Upra iis, yOice "in... the streets.” ’ No secular 
historian takes note of His birth. All history 
dates from that wondrous night, yet few or 
none of earth’s great or wise, knew of it when 
it came. “‘ He was in the world and the world 
knew it not.” The light was shining in the 
darkness for years and yeats before the world 
“comprehended ”’ it. 
From which we learn, surely, that the greatest 


36). DAYS TOR) THE) SONVOE Maan 


forces in history and experience ate not always 
the noisiest, that we are not to despair of 
apparent apathy in any age since there is always a 
a “ budding morrow in midnight,” and that when 
the shadows lie thickest on human affairs, there 
may already be shimmeting behind the eastern 
hills the first rays of a new day whose coming 
is to revolutionize the face of all things. 

So, too, in experience. We are not to ques- 
tion the reality of a brother’s faith because it 
can point to no cataclysmic experience. The 
light of Christ may steal upon a human soul as | 
it first stole upon the world, with the gentleness 
of the dawn. 


“ How silently, how silently, the wondrous light is given ! 
So God imparts to human hearts, the blessings of His — 
heaven. 


No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin, 


Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ 
enters in.” 


III. Once again and most truly of all, Christ’s 
coming was the Dayspring of History, because 


of its powerful effects in the world of human 
expertence. 


THE DAYSPRING 37 


Gentle as the Dayspring is, there is a mighty 
power behind it. It ushers its presence into 
the sky by a few faint streaks upon “ the ebon 
brow of night”; but soon it begins to infil- 
trate all the clouds with the splendour of its 
licht. It turns the white into rose, the black 
into gold, and rising higher into the sky its 
warming beams create everywhere life and 
activity. The birds begin to sing. Man goes 
“to his work and to his labour until the even- 
ing,” until at last blazing in high heaven with 
““ sunbeams like swords,” it becomes a force of 
terrible power so that no eye may dare look 
unveiled into its resplendent countenance. 

And so was it with Christ. Gently as He 
came, what power there was in His coming! 
Before him scattered the clouds of ignorance 
and sin. As Shelley says :— 


“A power from the unknown God 
A Promethean conqueror came 
With a triumphant path, he trod 
The Thorns of death and shame. 
Hell, sin and slavery came 
Like bloodhounds mild and tame 
To ptey no more because their Lord had taken flights 


38 DAYS;OF THE SON..OF MAN 


‘The moon of Mahomet ’ 

Arose and it shall set 

While blazoned high on heaven’s immortal noon 
The Cross leads generations on.” 


In the succeeding verse, the prophet dwells on 
these powets which ate thus to be let loose by 
this Promethean conqueror. 

In the first place He is to “ give light to 
them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of 
death.” As light reveals the objects of nature, 
so Christ revealed to man the realities of the 
spititual world. ‘The first of all these realities 
which He thus revealed was the love of God. 
No doubt there are hints of that revelation in 
the Old Testament. We can never forget the 
tender pathos of the 103rd Psalm: “Like as a 
father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth 
them that fear Him.” And some of the pro- 
phets give no less beautiful pictures of God. 
But while these chiefly dwell on His love to 
His own people, it was the unique quality of 
Christ that He revealed a divine love to all man- 
kind, irrespective of nationality or creed, of 
merit or demerit. ‘God commendeth His 


THE DAYSPRING 39 


love toward us in that while we were yet sinners 
Christ died for us.” In the forefront of His 
teaching there is this thought of a universal 
love, to the Prodigal as well as the saint, to the 
Gentile as well as the Jew. It was thus that 
the Daybreak visited Bethlehem, as a “light 
to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow 
of death.” 

For thus also He cast a new light on the 
great mysteries of human life, sin and sorrow 
and death. You remember the beautiful story 
in English history about the introduction of the 
Gospel into Northumbria. When St. Colum- — 
ba’s missionaries reached Northumberland in 
their evangelization of the country, a council 
was held by the King—then a heathen—as to 
whether they should permit them to cross the 
Tweed. ‘Perhaps thou recollectest,” said a 
noble, “what sometimes happens on wintry 
nights when thou art seated at table with thy 
watriots. A good fire is burning on the hearth 
and the hall is warm; but outside it snows and 
there is a high wind. ‘There comes a little bird 
which flies across the hall with fluttering wings, — 


40, ) DAYS OF THEY SON ROEM iviAy 


coming in by one window and going out by 
another. The moment of crossing is full of 
sweetness: it no longer feels either snow or 
storm. But it is quickly past and soon the 
bird flies into the night again. Such is man’s 
life on eatth. It comes from the night and 
goes out into the night. If the new teaching 
can shed light upon it, it behoves us to follow 
it.” “And that is ‘what \ Jesus did, ite tenga 
light upon sin, for He not only taught man what 
it was but how to get rid of it. He shed light 
upon sotrow, for He pointed to the love of God 
which was behind it and beyond it. He shed 
light on the last mystery of death because he 
revealed it to be to those who loved God but 
the dark avenue which leads to the many man- 
sions beyond. 

It is to this Zacharias refers when he closes 
his beautiful song by saying, “And to guide 
our feet into the way of peace.” Zacharias 
seems to have been constitutionally a rather 
timid man, very different from his intrepid son, 
The angelic vision had troubled him and he 
gave no ctedence at the first to the message 


THE DAYSPRING AI 


which it brought. But now these feats seem 
to have taken wings and fled away. He tells 
us expressly in this song, that the result of 
Christ’s advent was to be the deliverance of 
Man from fear, “that we being delivered out 
of the hand of our enemies,” that is, sin and 
sotrow and death, “might serve him without 
fear, in holiness before him, and righteousness 
all the days of our life.” And it is with the 
same thought he closes, Christ is to give “ light 
to them that sit in the shadow of death” and 
* guide our steps into the way of peace.” 

Has that light shone upon you and me? 
Has the Dayspring from on high visited our 
sin-darkened souls? Is it not the case with 
many of us, even professing Christians, that the 
light of the glad tidings of great joy is still dim 
and uncertain? Instead of walking in the way , 
of peace we tread fearfully through a shadow- 
land of doubts and fears. 

Mr, Arthur Benson in one of his books } 
quotes an unpublished letter of Dr. Johnson 
written in his last illness, which is full of the 

1 Where No Fear Was. 


42. DAYS OF ‘THE SONY OR VAN 


most poignant pathos. “O my friend,” he 
says, “the approach of death is very terrible. 
I am afraid to think on that, which I know I 
cannot avoid. It is vain to look round for that 
help which cannot be had. Yet we hope and 
fancy that he, who has lived to-day, may live 
to-mottow. But let us try to derive our hope 
from God. .Meanwhile let us be kind to one 
another. Do not neglect me.” 

There is a simplicity and sincerity about such 
a cty from the depths as cannot but endear its 
writer; but one cannot but regret seeing a 
Christian so far from the light and comfort, 
which Christ came to bring to those who dwell 
in the shadow of death. It was not for this 
that the Dayspring from on high visited us and 
we ought more resolutely to realize our heritage 
and possess our possessions in Christ, by that 
faith which has been given us to guide our steps 
into the way of peace. “* Hast thou caused the 
Dayspring to know his place P ” asks God in Job. 
What Job could not do, Christ has done. He 
has caused the Dayspring to know its place; 
the Dayspring of history in the lowly place of 


THE DAYSPRING 43 


a manger in the town of Bethlehem. Let us 
once again go in faith unto this wondrous place 
that we may tecapture the joy of the angelic 
hosts as they sang “‘ Glory to God in the highest 
and on earth peace toward men of good will.” 
“For unto us a child is born; unto us a Son 
is given.” ‘* Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; 
for He hath visited and redeemed His people.” 
He hath given “light to us who sit in darkness 
and in the shadow of death, to guide our steps 
into the way of peace.” 


Ill 


THE WONDERFUL CHILD 
(For Christmas) 


“For unto us a child is born . . . and His name shall be called 
Wonderful.’’—Isa. ix. 6. 


Tue faculty of wonder is natural to man. It 
is strongest in the child and has been planted 
there by a wise Creator. For wonder is the 
parent of knowledge. Admiration is the mother 
of imitation. Show me a man who wondets at 
nothing, and I will show you one who does 
nothing wonderful. 

“We live by admiration, hope and love.” 

There are three things which naturally evoke 
wonder. The first is novelty. We all wonder 
at what is absolutely new. See a bird fly across 
the heavens and you will hardly lift your eyes ; 
but see a man do it and all eyes will eagerly 


gaze at the phenomenon. 
44 


THE WONDERFUL CHILD 45 


Another source of wonder is the beautiful. 
Watch a crowd of children at some lantern 
exhibition and listen to the burst of exclam- 
ation that comes from their breasts as some 
exquisitely beautiful slide is thrown upon 
the screen, a ship sailing on a moonlit sea, the 
snow-white peaks of the Alps rising into a 
cloudless sky, a rose of rare loveliness spread- 
ing its delicate petals on every side. We are 
so made, that we cannot but respond to the 
beautiful as the harp strings respond to the 
player. 

But the highest cause of wonder is the sub- 
lime story of some great heroic deed, some- 
thing unparalleled in bravery or in sacrifice, 
which not only stirs and interests our minds ; 
but also elevates our souls, which lifts them 
higher, above the low levels of earthly desires 
and impels them to great and glorious deeds. 
This wonder is the vestibule of religion. It 
leads to awe and awe to reverence and 
reverence to faith. Wonder is not only 
the parent of knowledge: it is the nurse of 
faith. 


46 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


It is the glory of Christianity that it stimu- 
lates this last kind of wonder. It does so by 
the grandeur and sublimity of its conceptions. 
“Without controversy great is the mystery of 
Godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.” It 
does so by the beauty of the character in which 
this Incarnation is revealed. ‘“‘ We beheld His 
glory, the glory of the only begotten of the 
Father, full of grace and truth.” And it also 
does so by the novelty and unexpectedness of 
the source from which this revelation springs. 
It comes to man in the form of a little child. 
“Unto us a child is born and His name shall 
be called Wonderful.” 

There is something wonderful in any child. 
He is so fresh, so new, so beautiful, that when 
he first comes into any home he brings with 
him a new atmosphere. He makes old things 
pass away: he makes all things new. There 
has been nothing like him in the world before ; 
so the mother fondly says. And she is right. 
There are possibilities lurking there which you 
cannot estimate. That child may yet rule the 
nations. 


THE WONDERFUL CHILD = 47 


But if there is something wonderful in any 
child, it was specially so with the child Christ. 
When we think of the lowliness of His origin 
and then contrast that with the wonderful re- 
sults which flowed from His advent into human 
history, we cannot but feel the truth of this 
ancient prophecy, “‘ His name shall be called 
Wonderful.” The prophet refers to four ele- 
ments in the life of Christ, His teaching—His 
Works—His Character—and His Legacy to Life 
and from each of these He is tight in saying 
that His name should be called “‘ Wonderful.” 


I. Christ is wonderful as a Counsellor. He 
came from the poorest class in the community. 
He was born in a stable and cradled in a manger. 
He had no schooling such as we give even to 
a promising lad among the poor. He never 
sat at Gamaliel’s feet. Like Shakespeare “ He 
had small Latin and less Greek.” He belonged 
to a race rich indeed in religion but with nothing 
else in the way of culture to boast of; with 
none of the Antiquity of Egypt or Babylon, 
with none of the Wisdom of Greece, with none 


48 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


of the Majesty or Might of Rome.” “A Syrian 
teady to perish was His father”? and even in 
that Syrian land He came from a province 
famous neither for religion nor culture. “ Search 
and see, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” 
Nay, as if that were not enough, He came from 
one of the most despised cities in that province. 
“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth P ” 

Yet it is from such a spring that there has 
issued a stream of thoughts the noblest and of 
ideals the highest that have ever inspired the 
mind of man. From that humble stock there 
has issued conceptions of life and duty which 
have moulded the counsels of men in every 
age and were never more influential than they 
are to-day. Justly prized are the words of the 
ancient sages; beautiful are the fancies which 
have sprung from the brain of a Homer or a 
Virgil, a Dante or a Shakespeare ;~ but it is 
safe to say that their thoughts and fancies have 
never breathed or burned in the heart of humanity 
like the words of Him “‘ Who spake as never 
man spake.” Lord Rosebery has spoken of 
libraries as being largely cemeteries of dead 


THE WONDERFUL CHILD 49 


books ; but while that is an exaggeration it is 
true to say that all their books are dead and 
all their authors crumbling into dust compared 
with the life that throbs and the influence that 
thrills, in the words of Jesus Christ. Of Him 
we may truly say, 


“ He gives a light to every age, 
He gives but borrows none.” 


*“His name shall be called Wonderful, the 
Counsellor.” 


II. Again this Child may be called Wonderful 
not merely because of the words He spoke but 
because of the deeds He did. 

I speak not now of His miracles, though I 
might well speak of them, because whatever 
view we take about the possibility of miracles, 
thete must have been something wonderful 
about these mighty deeds which first drew the 
multitudes after Him. But lest they should 
be called in question by those who say that 
““ Miracles do not happen,” let me point you 
to these “ greater works ” which He prophesied 

4 


so DAYS. OF THE’ SON OF MAN 


His disciples would do in His name and which 
they have been doing ever since. 

Let me ask you to think of the mighty power 
that slumbered in that humble child of Mary, 
as He lay weak and helpless in the cradle of 
Bethlehem. Think of the power which in 
three centuries conquered the mightiest Empire 
of History. - Think of the courage which in- 
spired His followers to meet unflinching the 
scorn of Greek Philosophy and the puissance 
of persecuting Rome. To accomplish that was 
sutely a wonderful feat, as Gibbon has freely 
acknowledged and tried to explain away in his 
Decline and Fall, And what shall I more say 
of the power that still continues, seemingly 
unexhausted, in the influence of His spirit 
to-day ? 

The institutions He has founded for the 
amelioration of human suffering; the philan- 
thropies He has inspired; the wonderful mis- 
sionaty enthusiasms He has originated, never 
more temartkable than in our own generation ; 
the influence He has exerted on the dread scourge © 
of War, the League of Nations, His last great 


THE WONDERFUL CHILD 51 


wotk? Above all what shall we say of His 
work of regeneration in the individual? Paul 
was riot ashamed of the Gospel of Christ because 
it was “the power of God with salvation to 
evety one that believeth.” Have we any less 
cause to be proud of it to-day ? Only ignorance 
could say so. The works of Christ in saving 
souls from sin and sorrow ate as great to-day 
as they were when Peter said of his first miracle, 
“* His name through faith in His name hath made 
this man strong whom ye see and know: yea, 
the faith that is by Him hath given him this 
petfect soundness in the presence of you all.” 
His works no less than His words say of Him, 
His name shall be called Wonderful,” “ the 
“Mighty One, as God.” 


III. Once more this Child is no less wonderful 
when we look away from His words and works 
to the Personality into which He afterwards grew. 
He is not merely the Counsellor and the Mighty 
One: He is also “‘ the everlasting Father.” 

Greater than all He said and did was what 
He was. In that perfect life men saw a beauty 


52 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


and a grace such as they had never seen before. 
It was not merely that it was a blameless life 
but that there was a tenderness and a love 
breathing out from it which was a new thing 
in the history of the world. 

History had freely told of men who wete gteat 
by reason of their strength in the past. It had 
spoken of Alexander the Great and Pompey 
the Great and it was yet to speak of Frederic 
the Great and Napoleon the Great. But none 
of these men were conspicuous for tenderness. 
Some of them were very cruel and all of them 
had waded their way to the throne of Empire 
through seas of blood and tears. Even Cesar, 
the greatest of them all, had a hard element in 
his character and led the noblest of his foes to 
a ctuel death. 

But what is remarkable about Jesus was the 
union in His character of gentleness with strength. 
There was nothing weak in the Man Christ 
Jesus. See Him as with scathing denunciation 
He lays bare the hypocrisy of Scribe and Pharisee. 
“Woe unto you, ye generation of vipers, how 
can ye escape the damnation of Hell?” See 


THE WONDERFUL CHILD 33 


Him as with whip in hand he drives the false 
traffickers out of His Father’s House. See Him 
as in Pilate’s judgment-hall He stands forth calm 
before the storm of hate and passion. Well 
might Pilate say, “Behold the Man!” Was 
there ever man more manly than the Man Christ 
Jesus P 

Yes, but along with this there was a tender- 
ness, a compassion such as the world had never 
seen before. Who is this that takes the children 
in His arms and blesses them one by one? 
Who is this that takes the fallen woman by the 
hand and raises her to a new undreamed-of 
purity? Who is this that stands and weeps 
at Lazarus’ grave ? 


“It is the Lord, O wondrous story ; 
It is the Lord, the King of glory.” 


But what is most vital of all is this, that the 
same union of tenderness and strength which 
men saw in Him and which made some of them 
say He is a new Elias and others Jeremias, this 
He declared was a picture of God. “ He that 
hath seen Me,” he declared, “‘ hath seen the 


54 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Father.” And this amazing assumption He 
commended to men in such parables as the 
Lost Sheep and the Prodigal Son with such 
compelling beauty, that the world at once owned 
the surpassing splendour of such a conception 
and hailed Him as wonderful not merely as a 
teacher but as a revealer of “the everlasting 
Father.” Everlasting in might and majesty 
and yet like a Father who pities His children, 
so sttikingly does the prophet Isaiah from the 
far distance of centuries delineate the outlines 
of that character and personality, whose name 
was “‘ Wonderful.” 


IV. Last of all, Christ’s name is Wonderful 
because of “the unspeakable gift” He has be- 
gueathed to man. 

Of all the many gifts with which Christ has 
dowered the human race the best of all is peace. 
He made that clear by mentioning it alone in 
His last Will and Testament. ‘“‘ Peace I leave 
with you, My peace I give unto you.” It was 
of that gift the angels had specially sung when 
the advent of the Wonderful Child was announced 


THE WONDERFUL CHILD 55 


by the angelic song above the fields of Bethle- 
hem. “On earth peace and good will to men.” 
And that gift He Himself sealed to Man when 
on Calvary, He “‘ made peace by the blood of 
His Cross.” 

“There is no joy but calm,” says the poet, 
and there can be no permanent happiness where 
peace with God is not its centre and foundation. 
But this peace is to be won by faith in Christ. 
Multitudes found it so when first they looked 
to that Cross and “being justified by faith” 
found peace with God and multitudes have 
found it to be so since. “He is our peace” 
—peace with God, peace within ourselves and 
because of that peace with ourfellowmen. “‘ For 
there is neither Jew, nor Greek, there is neither 
Boucenor free.) .-yerare all One. in* Christ 
Jesus.” 

It must be admitted that the world is still a 
good way off from appreciating this last and 
best of the gifts of the Wonderful Christ. In 
spite of 1914 and its lesson, there is still much 
national selfishness and suspicion among the 
nations, still much rattling of the scabbard and 


56 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


sharpening of the instruments of War by those 
who professedly sit at the feet of the Prince 
of Peace. ‘The ink of the Locarno Pact was 
scatcely dry before the air became thick with 
jealousy and secret diplomacy. The money 
which the nations are still spending on prepara- 
tion for war is a disgrace to our Christian civili- 
zation. Nevertheless, the League of Nations is 
a gteat fact and in spite of the selfishness of the 
West and the suspicions of the East we believe 
it will continue to be a great and glorious fact 
and that the day is coming, when the dream of 
the ancient prophet will be fulfilled and 


* Man to man the world o’er 
Shall brithers be, for a’ that.” 


To sum up, we have spoken of the wonderful 
name of the Child of Bethlehem. We have 
seen how marvellously the dream of the ancient 
prophet was fulfilled in Him whose name was 
“Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting 
Father and the Prince of Peace.’ 


> 


And now 
what is the practical lesson we should learn 
from that wonder? Surely it is this—‘“ This 


THE WONDERFUL CHILD 57 


is the Lord’s doing,” and therefore, because 
of that, ‘“‘it is marvellous in our eyes.” How 
wonderful that from the humble cradle of Beth- 
lehem there should come such a child as this ! 
What is the explanation of it? Surely there 
can be but one. “ The Word was made flesh 
and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, 
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father 
full of grace and truth.” 

Let us go now even unto Bethlehem and see 
this thing which is come to pass. Let us bend 
in lonely reverence before this wonderful Child. 
Let us bring forth our gifts of reverence, of 
obedience, of love and pour them at the feet 
of our glorious King, saying, “ Blessing and 
glory and wisdom and power be unto Him who 
came to out poor world nineteen hundred years 
ago as a little child, the wonderful Counsellor, 
the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the 
Prince of Peace.” 


IV 
OURSUEL AEE V UIE 
(For the close of the Year) 


“The time past of our life."—1 PETER iv. 3. 


THERE is a phtase we often hear used to-day 
in reference to gteat experiences through which 
we have passed. We are having “the time of 


29 


out life” we say,—speaking of red-letter days, 
halcyon days, days that are shining with joy 
_ and success. 

‘“* Ah! that was the time of my life,’ we some- 
times sigh; “the time when our children 
wete young, when their merry laughter made 
music round our fireside, and health and vigour 
crowned our days. We did not realize it at 
the time; but that was the time of our life.” 

But Peter would remind us here that all our 
life is such atime. He is not thinking of special 


pottions of our life. He is thinking of life as 
58 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 59 


a whole. He is thinking of that segment of 
eternity which is summed up in your little span 
of time. Small as it is, itis big with importance ; 
it is rich in opportunity. According as we live 
it, we make our characters and mould our des- 
tinies. It is “the time of our life.” f 
Now I wish to speak of three things, on this 
closing Sunday of the year, that are suggested 
by this little text, according to the different 
ways in which we emphasize its key-words, 
mime Pasi, and our fife. 
I We have brought before us here 4 
PRECIOUS gift, the time of out life. 
II We are reminded that THIS GIFT IS 
SWIFTLY PASSING. It is “the time 


22 


past of our life,” that Peter asks us to 
think of here, and 

III We are encouraged by A PRESENT 
OPPORTUNITY. This gift, though 
passing, is present still. It is still our Life; 


outs to make something of in the future. 


J. First of all, we are taught here HOW 
pee COOUS Alt PATNG) I SoNTEED, GIB E 


60 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


OF LIFE. You will say that is a very com- 
monplace reflection ; and so it is; but it is one 
of these commonplaces whose importance can 
never be too often hammered into our minds. 

Robertson of Brighton tells in one of his 
great sermons of a marble statue of a Greek 
- goddess he once saw in the public square of 
a Continental town. Art had fashioned her 
into a perennial fountain; so that through 
her lips and hands fresh water was evet flowing. 
But the marble image stood there itself impas- 
sive; making no effort to arrest the gliding 
water. So time seems to flow through 
the hands of some of us; swift and pause- 
less, till it has run out. And there the: man 
himself stands petrified into a marble sleep, 
not realizing what it is that is passing by 
him. Yes, if we only grasped it as we ought, 
this truth would be one of the most vivifying 
of all our thoughts. This present, with its 
moments and hours and days and years, is 
“the time of our life.” 

We see how precious a thing life is when 
we think of what happens to its possessor when 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 61 


that gift is taken from him. You read the de- 
sctiption of some great funeral, the obsequies 
of some great monarch, or statesman or poet; 
the crowds that gather in the stately Abbey, 
the solemn setvice, the long procession, the 
gotgeous tomb, the plaintive music of the 
Requiem and then—then comes the end. The 
poor body is left there to loneliness and dissolu- 
tion, and in time forgetfulness. I have some- 
times thought as I read of these great funerals 
of that last act in the drama—the coffin left 
alone. We hear nothing of that. That does 
not come into the picture and yet that is the 
reality behind all these outward trappings of 
public lamentation. It is the committing of 
a dead body to the dust, the burying of it 
“out of sight,” as Abraham said with pathetic 
candour. 

It reminds one of what the great French 
preacher, Massillon, said at the funeral of “ Le 
Grand Monarque,”’ when looking down at the 
wizened and discoloured face of Louis XIV, still 
exposed to view as it lay in the chancel of Notre 
Dame, he burst into tears and, instead of preach- 


2 


62 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


ing the eloquent funeral oration he had prepared, 
could only articulate, “Only God is great! 
Only God is great!” 

And then, too, think of how precious a thing 
life is, in view of its vast potentialities. You 
read the life of some nobly gifted or generously 
inspited man. You are stirred with the record 
of its noble achievements ; you are moved with 
a noble admiration of his beautiful character, 
his goodness, his sacrifice, and you say to your- 
selfas you finish the last page: ‘* What a beautiful 
life! Would I could live a life like his! What 
a precious gift, if only I could use it as he 
cig iis 

Yes, life is a precious thing, if we only realized 
its possibilities. 


“Not many lives have we to live, 
One, only one. 
How precious should that one life be, 
This narrow span!” 


II. This leads me to the second thought of 
our text. The preciousness of our life is further 
emphasized by the Apostle when he reminds 


OUR LITTLE LIFE 63 


us, that life is not merely a gift but is also A 
QUICKLY PASSING GIFT. Hence he speaks 
not merely of the time of our life but “ she time 


past of our life.” 


To St. Peter’s readers much of that gift was 
already gone. How much, none could say. 
Sometimes those who are soonest to lose it 
seem least likely to do so. But according to 
the law of averages, we can all estimate roughly 
how much of our life is already past. Some 
of us are in the twenties and that means that a 
third of our working life is gone; some are 
in the thirties and that means a half > some ate 
in the forties and only a third remains; while 
many are much near the end. The time past of 
out life is much greater than the time that is 
to be. 

And how has that time been passed ? In the 
case of those to whom Peter was writing it had 
been largely misspent; misspent in “ working 
the will of the Gentiles.” For that will was 
an evil will. The catalogue of its deeds as he 
recites it here is dark beyond conception. It 


64. DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


gives us a strange picture of that early Church, 
when we tead that the time past of its members, 
had been spent in “ lasciviousness, lusts, excess 
of wine, tevellings, banquetings, and abomin- 
able idolatries.” Is it so with any of youP 
I should be sorry to think so. We live in a 
better age than that “hard Roman world,” 
and, except among the Salvationists, there are 
few Church Rolls, thank God, that could 
show such a catalogue of crime as is here 
disclosed. 

I say “thank God!” and yet, perhaps, we 
should not thank God so much for it. The fact 
is the Church is not touching the lowest strata 
of society as she ought. She is far too much 
the church of the respectable. But even among 
these, have not many of us to acknowledge with 
sotrow that the past time of our life has not 
been so vety different from those of Peter’s 
readers? Are there none of us, who ate not 
painfully conscious that their past life contains 
dark memories of such things as Peter writes 
here P 

Lasciviousness! Alas, if our secret hearts 


OUR LITTLE LIFE | 6; 


could speak they could tell of many a foul 
blot on the conscience even of God’s professed 
disciples by reason of this defiling sin! And 
lusts? The lust for Gold, the lust for Honour— 
is there none of that in the modern Church ? 
Why, if you were to purge out of your Church 
Rolls the names of the men and women who 
could not plead “not guilty’ to one of these 
sins, I am afraid you would leave behind a very 
attenuated list. And besides this waste of sin 
is there none of the waste of idleness? Peter 
mentions here things that cannot be called 
are not sinful in 


? 


actual sins. “* Banquetings ’ 
themselves ; but when life is given up to ban- 
quetings, when all our days are passed in 
pleasure, when there is no record in it of generous 
service to others, then it is worse than sinful. 
It is the waste of life itself that brings the soul 
to that terrible awakening of which Rossetti has 
given so striking a picture. 


“The lost days of my life until to-day— 
What were they could I see them on the street 
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat 
Sown once for food but trodden into clay ? 


ws 


66. DAYS OF. THE SON; @R Mam 


Or golden coins squandered but still to pay, 
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet, 
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat 

The undying throats of hell, athirst alway P 


I do not see them here, but after death, 
God knows, I know the faces I shall see 
Each murdered self crying with low last breath, 
‘I am thyself! What hast thou done to me?’ 
‘And I, and I, thyself ’—so each one saith, 
And thou, thyself to all eternity,” 


What is the lesson Peter would draw from 
this sad review? Is it, like the poet’s, one of 
despair? No; the tone of this” epistlevas 
everywhere one of hope. Hope is its keynote. 
With this it opens. “ Blessed be the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath 
begotten us unto a lively hope.” The past 
of your life is gone, but the future remains. 
Make use of it and it will atone for the sins 
and losses of that past. 


Ill. This brings us to the last great thought 
the Apostle would bring before us in our text, 
THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE EU as: 


Life for his hearers is not merely a precious 


OUNChTT FEE. TIPE 67 


gift, and a passing gift: it is for them a still 
present gift. He speaks of it as owr life, ours 
to do something with yet, ours to make its 
future rich and noble. 

You remember the story told in Roman history 
of an ancient king, who went to visit the Sibyl 
at Cumz, in order to purchase from her her 
nine precious books of prophecy. But the price 
she asked was so exorbitant that the king tre- 
fused to give it and began to bargain. The 
only answer she gave was to cast three of the 
precious books into the fire, adding solemnly : 
“The price of the six is the same as that of the 
nine.’ The king again began to expostulate 
with her, but once again she cast three more 
of the books into the fire, saying again, “ The 
Merenor the three is thatyof the nine.’ )The 
king in consternation was now only too glad 
to give her any price and eagerly grasped what 
still was left. 

It is a similar thought Peter expresses here 
when he says, “ The time past of our life may 
suffice us to have wrought the will of the 
Gentiles.” The word “suffice” is ironical. 


68 DAYS OF THE SON: OF MAN 


Enough has been consumed in the fites of time, 
nay, far too much. Let us prize and earnestly 
improve what still remains. 

To quote the fine commentary of the saintly 
Archbishop Leighton on this epistle, ‘“‘ The 
time past may suffice'us. Therefore, O corrupt 
lusts, look for no more. I have served you 
too long. The rest, whatever it be, must be 
given to my Lord. Ashamed and grieved am 
I to be so long in beginning. So much, it 
may be the most of my race past, before I took 
notice of my God. Oh! how I have lost and 
worse than lost all my past days.” 

Yet something still remains. Three books 
of the time of my life are still unconsumed. 
Let me purchase them at any cost if by God’s 
etace | may make some reparation for the years 
that ate lost, “ buying..up the opportunities ” 
because my days have hitherto been so “ evil.” 
As the dying thief was able even in the last hour 
of a wasted life to lay hold of “the hope set 
before him in the Gospel ” which Christ preached 
to him then; so may it be with you and me, if 
hitherto we have too little made use of the 


OUR’ LITTLE LIFE 69 


opportunities of the past. On this closing 
Sabbath of another year, be it ours to hear the 
voice of Hope which says to us, the time past 
may suffice you *‘to work the will of the Gentiles.” 
““ Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the 
dead, and Christ shall give’thee light.” 

Peene time! past “of your life)? (These words 
have a message for us at all times, but they have 
so specially at those anniversaries in our life 
when we ate admonished by their recurrence 
of the passage of the years. You remember 
how Milton makes use of his twenty-third birth- 
day for reflections and resolutions such as I 
have already referred to. 

“How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, 

Stolen from me my three-and-twentieth year |! 
My hasting days fly on with full career, 
But my late Spring no bud or blossom shew’th.” 
- He resolves thereafter to live a more earnest 
life, ““ As ever in my Great Taskmaster’s eye,” 
—a resolution well kept. 

Curiously enough, the same occasion is men- 
tioned in the life of Gladstone, leading to a 
similar admonition. In his diary, 1 find this 


40 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


written: “‘ This day I completed my twenty- 
third year. In future I hope circumstances 
will bind me down with a rigour, which my 
natutal sluggishness will find it impossible to 
elude.” ‘That resolve was also nobly fulfilled. 
He then entered on a life of service to the state 
which, whatever its other faults may have been, 
could never metit either from God ot man’ 
the condemnation of a slothful servant. 

Petchance I address some one here on a 
similar anniversary. May your natural birthday 
be to you a spiritual new birth, the birth in your 
mind and heart of thoughts and feelings which 
will affect all your after days. 

And finally, to bring to clear expression what 
has been the underlying thought of this whole 
sermon, is not the close of the year such an 
occasion and opportunity? To reflect with 
heart-searching regret on “‘the time past of our 
life,” to remember how large a segment is already 
gone, to do so in no sentimental or despairing 
spirit but with sincere repentance and resolute 
hopefulness, believing that ‘“‘ we may rise on step- 
ping-stones of our dead selves to higher things ” 


OURGDID TURE. LIBRE, 71 


—this may be to us the beginning of days, the 
birth-hour of a high and holy incentive, that 
will make the prophet’s vision to be fulfilled 
by us. “* Behold, I create new heavens and a 
new eatth; and the former things shall not 
be remembered nor come into mind.” 

Let me close with the well-known lines of 
the greatest of the Victorian poets, lines written 
at a bitth-hour in his life too, when he resolved 
he would no longer live under the shadow of 
an old sorrow ; and make the coming of the New 
Year mark the beginning of a brighter and more 
useful poetic life in the future :— 

“Ring out the old, ring in the new, 
Ring happy bells across the snow; 
The year is going, let him go; 

Ring out the false, ring in the true. 
Ring out the grief that saps the mind, 
For those that here we see no more; 


Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 
Ring in redress to all mankind. 


Ring out the want, the care, the sin, 

‘The faithless coldness of the times, 

Ring out; ring out my mournful rhymes, 
But ring the fuller minstrel in. 


72 


DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Ring in the valiant man and free 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be.” 


V. 
THE CHRISTIAN MARINER’S COMPASS 


(For New Year Sunday) 


“Tn all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.” 
—PROV. iil. 6. 
SarLors tell us that there is one constellation 
in the Northern Hemisphere which is known 
as the Mariner’s Compass. It is that of The 
Plough, the two pointers of which make a line 
that always points to the Pole Star. Looking 
at these the sailor can always know his way 
across the pathless sea on a clear night. 


In our text we have what may be called the 
Christian Mariner’s Compass. It is in one 
sentence, ‘“‘ to acknowledge God in all our ways.” 
Make God first in all your plans and purposes 
and then you can never go astray. 


But what, you will ask, is it to acknowledge 
73 


74 DAYS OF THE *SON OF MAN 


God? What do you mean by making God first 
in your life ? 


I. Well, in the first place I would say, z 
means to ask His blessing on any enterprise you may 
undertake. 

You all know what it means to ask a blessing 
on the food you are about to take. It means 
that you ate thanking God as the giver of that” 
food and that you ate praying that He will 
make it useful and wholesome to you. In 
other words, you ate acknowledging God in that 
act of eating and drinking. Now, so should it 
be in all you do. In all your ways you should 
acknowledge God by asking His blessing on 
everything you say or do. 

And of course that simple act carries with it 
a great implication. It means that the thing 
you ate going to do is such, that you can ask 
God’s blessing upon it. If you can’t do that 
then it is an indication that you should not do 
it. In other words it points to conscience as 
the first and the supreme guide of life. Con- 
science is the Pole Star of the Christian Mariner. 


CHRISTIAN MARINER’S COMPASS 75 


The breastplate of the High Priest was said to 
have a wonderful jewel upon it, called the “‘ Urim 
and the Thummim,” which had the property 
“of glowing at God’s yes and dimming at 
God’s no.” You and I have each a Urim and 
Thummim in our secret heart; a voice which 
evet says to us, “ This is the way, walk ye in 
it.” To listen to and to obey that voice is to 
“acknowledge God in all our ways.” 


II. Once more to acknowledge God in all 
out ways is fo seek for the direction of His Spirit. 

Authoritative as the conscience is in moral 
questions, there are other matters on which 
it can give no deciding leading. 

Such are the perplexities of common life, 
those cases in which moral factors do not enter, 
or in which they cannot be so clearly discerned 
as to afford a decision to the question. ‘These 
petplexities are not alternatives of right of 
wrong, but of what is wise and unwise. They 
ate what the Greek Philosopher called the 
“adiaphora”’—the indifferent things from a 
moral point of view—and yet they are very 


76° (DAYS: OF “THE “SON” OF CNizAIN 


far from being indifferent in regard to our 
success of happiness in life. 

Now we acknowledge God in all such moments 
of perplexity by bringing such matters before 
Him ia earnest and believing prayer. ‘This is what, 
you temember, Eleazer did at the well, when 
he came to the moment of his greatest per- 
plexity. “‘ O Lord God of my master Abraham,” 
he said, “I pray thee send me good speed this 
day and show kindness unto my master Abra- 
ham ” 
for guidance in the work he had in hand. Now 


; and then followed a very definite prayer 


to acknowledge God in all our ways is to do 
that. It means, as the old catechism puts it, that 
we believe in God as a Father Who is able and 
willing to help us in every time of need, and 
that we are not afraid or ashamed to go to Him 
and ask for His guidance “in each perplexing 
path of life.” 

Although most of us are willing to do this 
in private, we are not so willing to do it in 
public. It is said of Abraham Lincoln that at 
a great crisis in the Civil War he was not ashamed 
to tell his Cabinet that he had made the matter 


CHRISTIAN MARINER’S COMPASS 77 


a subject of earnest prayer and that he believed 
God had answered that prayer. If there were 
mote of this acknowledgment of God in public 
life it would be better for the world. 

But we should bring to God not merely 
the great things, but the little things of life, if 
we wish matters to go smoothly with us during 
the day. ‘There is far too little preparation 
for the day’s work by a quiet talk with God 
in the morning hour. Much of our prayers 
ate a hurried repetition of petitions learned long 
azo at a mother’s knee. What we ought to do, 
is to spread out the day before God as Hezekiah 
spread out the letter of Rabshakeh, and leave 
it there. 

In the life of Dr. Hunter, of Glasgow, there 
is a letter written him by a lawyer. This man 
had studied for the Church; but doubts assailed 
him and he became an agnostic. He turned 
aside to the law and for years never entered 
a chutch, but under the influence of Hunter 
he was led back to faith in a personal God; and 
this is what he writes: “‘I may tell you what 
I know you will care to hear. For about five 


78. DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


yeats I have almost never prayed. Not that 
God was entirely unreal, but so far off that the 
answering of prayer in a universe of fixed laws 
seemed impossible. The influence of your ser- 
vices, however, has been to discover to me that 
there is possible a true communion with God, 
and since I have had a toom of my own, each 
morning I spend a minute or two in God’s 
ptesence quietly laying before Him my aspira- 
tions in the day’s work and I am sure it is the 
best way to begin the day.” To do that, is 
to acknowledge God in a// our ways. 


III. Once more, to acknowledge God is 
to persist in the path in which we beheve He bas 
directed us, no matter how difficult and unpopular 
it may be. 

The prophet Elisha once used a phrase which 
should be engraven on every man’s heart if 
he wishes to beastrong man. ‘“ The Lord God,” 
he said, -“° before’ whom] “stand. Hitsha 
felt always he was standing in the presence of 
the Lord and with that consciousness dominat- 
ing all he did, the fear of man became impossible 


CHRISTIAN MARINER’S COMPASS 79 


for him. If you and I could only practise that 
presence of God in all our life, it would become 
energized by a new power and courage which 
would make us altogether different men. 

The Regent Morton said of John Knox as 
he was laid in his grave, ‘“‘ There lies one who 
never feared nor flattered flesh.” Knox feared 
God so much that he feared man not at all. 
Get into the way of realizing that there is always 
a Third in all your interviews, and it will make 
you stronger and better men. The path of 
life will lie clear cut before you. Acknowledg- 
ing God in all your ways, He will direct your 
paths. 


IV. And this brings me to consider the pro- 
mise which follows from the precept of our text, 
“ He shall direct thy paths.” 

Now as to this direction we must not expect 
it to be always or indeed usually one of mirac- 
ulous oft in any way remarkable intervention. 
No doubt we have such cases in Scripture. Paul 
had his vision of “the Man of Macedonia ” 
beckoning him towards Europe. Joan of Arc 


86° (DAYS OF (THE) SON: OP Vay 


had her heavenly visitors leading her on to the 
deliverance of France, and no doubt often still 
there do come particular providences which 
we cannot but regard as divine signposts in | 
the path of life. 

Thus, there is the incident in Spurgeon’s life 
which deterred him from going to College, 
after he had begun to preach in the villages 
round Cambridge. ‘“ Knowing that learning 
is often a great means of usefulness, I felt in- 
clined to accept an opportunity of attending 
College, which was then opened by the visit 
of Dr. Angus of Stepney College. It was ar- 
ranged we should meet in the house of Mr. 
Macmillan, the publisher, at Cambridge. I 
entered the house exactly at the time and was 
shown into a room where I waited @ couple 
of hours, feeling too much impressed with my 
Own insignificance to ring the bell and inquire 
the reason of the delay. At length the bell 
was tung and I was informed the Doctor had 
waited in another room till he could stay no 
longer and gone off to London. The stupid 
gitl had shown me in, but given no information 


CHRISTIAN MARINER’S COMPASS 81 


that I had called. I was not a little disappointed 
and thought of making another application, but 
that afternoon, as I was walking out to the 
country, I was startled by what seemed a loud 
voice, but what may have been only an illusion, 
saying, ““Seekest thou great things for thyself ? 
Seek them not.” Spurgeon believed God’s 
hand was behind the servant’s foolish mistake, 
and pethaps he was tight. He was one of those 
untutored geniuses called like Burns from the 
plough. College education might have spoiled 
the fulness and freshness of his message. 

But, while thus we gladly admit that God may 
direct us at great crises by special interpositions, 
the whole teaching of Scripture is against relying 
on these. Paul no doubt had his vision; but 
where would modern missions have been if 
every missionaty had to depend on a vision before 
he went? Carey of Kettering had no visions 
when he became the Father of modern missions. 
He came to his great resolution simply by read- 
ing his Bible and obeying his Master. 

Most significant of all, we read of no vision 


calling the Saviour when He left the home at 
6 


82 -DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Nazareth and went to join the Baptist at the 
opening of His Ministry. What Jesus relied 
upon for guidance was His own judgment as 
it moved in harmony with the Father’s will. 
His judgment He believed to be “ just ” because 
in all things He sought “ not His own will but 
the will of Him that sent Him.” 

Do not, therefore, fall into the habit of seeking 
visions and revelations at every decisive step 
in your life; but so live in submission to 
God’s will that your ordinary faculties, un- 
consciously directed by His spirit, may be 
sufficient to direct your paths. 

It; is told ofsthe Rev. J.» P/aStmthersaae 
Greenock, that he once had a conversation 
with the Rev. Principal Denney, as to whether 
it was tight to follow John Wesley’s habit of 
turning up the Bible and looking at the first 
text that fixed the eye, as a divine direction in 
special times of perplexity. Dr. Denney held 
it was not; that it was using the Bible as a magic 
book instead of studying it prayerfully and 
rationally. ‘* Suppose we make an experiment, 
then,” said Struthers, and he turned up the 


CHRISTIAN MARINER’S COMPASS 83 


Bible, seeking direction on the matter in hand, 
The first words his eyes lighted on were: “‘ Thou 
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Struthers 
took it as a decision against the practice, and 
I think he was right. 

It is, of course, a different matter if we study 
the Bible patiently and seek to know its teaching 
on a perplexing problem. It is told of David 
Livingstone that one night he was sitting on a 
river’s bank in great perplexity, faced on the 
other side by enemies who seemed bent on 
his own destruction; he took up his old Bible 
for guidance and turned deliberately to the 
wotds that Christ gave to His disciples as a 
last love message before He went up to heaven, 
“Go ye and teach all nations... and lo! 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world.” He closed the book and said, 
“ That is the word of a gentleman and He will 
never bteak it.” He went happily to bed and 
slept like a child. Next day he crossed the 
rivet, tight into the midst of his foes. They 
broke before him, amazed at his courage, and 


he went safely through. 


84. DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


And this leads me to speak of the definite 
leadings of Providence which God will assuredly 
give to us if we acknowledge Him in all our 
ways. 

One of these is by the inclination of the will 
in a certain direction. “'Thy people,” says the 
Psalmist, “shall be willing in the day of thy 
power.” There is an old proverb which says, 
“If you doubt, don’t do.” It is a good tule 
for the man who has sought God’s guidance 
in prayer. He will make us willing to go in 
the path in which He wants us to go. 

Another definite leading zs the removal of 
obstacles in the path divinely directed. We have 
looked forward to some duty with much mis- 
giving. We have prayed earnestly over it and 
then gone forward in a certain path feeling 
that God was leading us, but feeling too, that 
a Red Sea crossing lay before us. But lo! 
When we: came to the’ shore,’ we tounge 
there was) no: sea, Or, «rather > Godwinae 
“made a way in the sea and a path in the 
great waters.” He had made all his moun- 
tains a way and the rough places plain and 


CHRISTIAN MARINER’S COMPASS | 85 


the crooked straight, “making us to say with 
the poet, 
“My barque is wafted to the strand 
By breath divine ; 
And on the helm there rests a Hand 
Other than mine.” 

Last and best of all, we may be sure that God 
is directing us in a certain path by the consciousness 
of Christ's presence with us in it. Travellers in 
the backwoods of America tell us how difficult 
it is to make one’s way through the vast 
forests. The direction gets lost in the most 
extraordinary manner and the tenderfoot, even 
with a compass, finds himself in a dense 
wood plodding on and on for days and days, 
without striking the promised river or lake 
or settlement, until at last he falls down and 
perishes of thirst in the lonely wild. But the 
skilful hunter in these woods, has no such dif_i- 
culty. He knows the “blazed” trails running 
right through these woods and even if he has 
not taken them before, knows where to look 
for the marks which his fellow foresters have 
made before him. On every tree some twenty 


86 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


ot thirty yards apart there is a notch cut high 
above the undergrowth so that he can always 
see it. Keeping his eye on that, he passes 
swiftly on. He follows “the blazed trail,” 
and is never deceived by it. 

In life’s perplexing paths, there is a blazed 
trail. It was blazed by a great Pioneer who 
made it two thousand years ago. He has left 
there the marks which you can see still, by 
which you will be infallibly guided to safety 
if only you follow them to the end. Thousands 
have used it since He made it and it has never 
failed anyone yet. Will not you take it as 
you enter on this New Year in the journey of 
your life? Will you not resolve to acknowledge 
God in Christ more in the future, than you have 
done in the past, and then step cheerily forward 
believing that He will direct your steps. “ See- 
ing we ate compassed about by so great a cloud 
of witnesses, let us run the race set before us 
looking unto Jesus.” 


VI 
THE CONTRASTS OF PALM SUNDAY 


(For Palm Sunday) 


“Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto 
thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass.”—ST. MATT. xxl. 5. 
WHEN a great general returned to Rome after 
a signal conquest, he was often Niaaraith to 
the city with what was known as “a triumph.” 
It was a wonderful spectacle, and its traces 
are still to be seen in the old Roman Forum, 
in those magnificent triumphal arches through 
which the conquetor passed on his way to the 
Temple of Jove, there to offer sacrifice to the 
gods for the victory vouchsafed him. 

Now this story may be truly called the triumph 
of Jesus. He was coming into the city, which 
He loved and for which He was soon to die. 
He was coming after a life of the most wonderful 


victories overt sin and sorrow and death; and 
87 


88 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


He was doing so to crown them with the greatest 
victory of all—the Cross. It was therefore 
seemly that He should enter His capital city in 
triumph. He wished it to be so because He 
claimed to be its Messianic King, but how 
different His triumph from that of an earthly 
King! Here is no pomp or worldly power. 
Here is no gaudy triumph or marble arches. 
Allis meek and lowly and unpretending. “ Tell 
ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy king cometh 
unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass,” yea, 
“upon a colt, the foal of an ass.” 

Now | this element of contrast between the 
eatthly triumph of the world’s Conquerors and 
the spiritual triumph of Jesus, is deeply impressed 
on this whole story, and I wish to concentrate 
yout thought on it specially to-day. It is a 
feature which, I think, gives a certain freshness 
and charm to the old story and is besides full 
of moral instruction. 


I. And first of all we are at once arrested by 
the contrast between the central Figure of the scene 
and the surrounding spectators of it; the contrast of 


CONTRASTS OF PALM SUNDAY 89 


a sorrowing Saviour and a rejoicing multitude. It has ~ yi 


been suggested that the whole conception of 
this triumphal entry was distasteful to Jesus. 
“It was,” says Professor David Smith, “a piece 
of acting, and pleasing as it was to the multitude, 
it was very distasteful to Him.”? We cannot 
accept such a view. It is derogatory to the 
Master to think of Him as acting any part in 
which He did not believe. No, this was the 
whole meaning of the story that He did claim 
to be a King and that in this triumphal entry 
on the city of David He was asserting His right 
to be called the Son of David. 

The cheers of the multitude were, therefore, 
not distasteful to Him and still less were the 
Hosannas of the children. He welcomed them 
and said, “‘If these should hold their peace the 
stones would immediately cry out.” Nature 
would be outraged if there were no welcome 
for the Son of God as He entered on the last 
scene of the greatest drama that had ever been 
witnessed on the stage of history, the redemption 
of man. 


1 In the Days of His Flesh, by Prof. David Smith, p. 394. 


go DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Nevertheless, though Jesus welcomed this 
triumph, there is this much truth in Dr. Smith’s 
view, that He himself was widely separated in 
feelings from those that gathered round Him 
to join it. Picture to yourself some great pro- 
cession to-day in which the central figure of 
its cheering thousands is Himself burdened by 
some sectet sorrow ot fear (such, for example, 
as attended the Archduke of Austria on the 
day of that fatal tide of his through the 
streets of Sarajevo), and you have a picture 
of Jesus as He listened to the resounding 
** Hosannas ” of the multitude on that first 
Palm Sunday. 

‘Ab | 7? He ‘said to. Himself, \° youteheams 
but Iam like to weep! You hail me as a king, 
but I am a king that is crowned only to die, 
You greet me with Hosannas to-day! Before 
the week is done it will be ‘ Crucify Him ! Cru- 
cify Him!’ ” 

And so, crowned as He was with palm-wreath 
and welcomed by the cheers of ten thousands, 
it was observed by those who were nearest Him, 
that, “as He drew near the city, He wept.” 


CONTRASTS OF PALM SUNDAY 91 


Such is the first contrast which I see in 
the Triumph of Jesus, and what is the lesson 


I learn from it? Is it not this, that while p\v’’ 


the instincts of the multitude are tight, they 4, 
‘need to be wisely Hiseérad'? MEMES Conon: iC 


“folk welcomed Jesus because they knew He 
was their friend. ‘They realized that His Gospel 
was a ttuly democratic one, inasmuch as it 
preached the infinite value of every human soul 
and thus made for three great words of human 
progress, Liberty, Fraternity and Equality before 
God. 

In acclaiming Jesus as a true prophet, there- 
fore, the multitudes were tight, as they usually 
ate in the long run. As Lincoln has said in 
oft-quoted words, “ You may fool some of the 
people all of the time; and you may fool all 
of the people some of the time; but you 
can never fool all of the people all of the 
time.” 

The instincts of Democracy are on the side 
of Christ, if only you can get to its deepest 
heart. The working man has no real quarrel 
with Christ. His quarrel is that the Church 


92, DAYS. OF THE (SON? OF VMAX 


does not represent Christ, and while I think he 
is often sadly led astray as to what the Church 
teaches, I cannot help feeling that sometimes 
he has a good case to make out for his com- 
plaint. ‘There is far too much class-feeling in 
the modern Church. What we need is more 
of the spirit of the Democrat of Nazareth, Who, 
as He beheld the multitudes, had compassion on 
them. 


II. But in the second place I notice this further 
contrast in the Triumph of Jesus, @ contrast 
between a steadfast Saviour and a fickle crowd. 
Though the ctowd is usually true in its deepest 
instincts, it is very apt to be led astray by a noisy 
demagogue who can pander to its baser passions. 
Thus it is apt to be fickle in its attachments and 
ungrateful to its benefactors. This, as I have 
indicated, was in Jesus’ mind as He listened to 
the Hallelujahs of the mob. He rated them at 
their true value, which was very low. Yet 
that did not deflect Him by one hait’s-breadth 
from His purpose. 

That is finely brought out by Munkacsy in 


CONTRASTS OF PALM SUNDAY 93 


his great picture called “ Ecce Homo!” On 
the one side there is the howling Eastern mob 
ctying out their execrations with distorted face 
and garments, torn by fanatical passion, and on 
the other there is the calm, steadfast counten- 
ance of Jesus as He looked across this angry 
sea to the joy set before Him. He “ heeded 
Rote rovilino *tones:7)) "As a’ lamb” dumb 
before its shearers, so He openeth not His 
mouth.” 

This contrast is deeply impressed on us by 
this story. It has no doubt been suggested that 
the multitudes who cried “ Hosanna” to Him 
on Olivet, were not the same as those who said 
@rucity “(on Calvary. The one» were. the 
_ people of Galilee who loved Him; the other, 
the Jerusalem mob, stirred up by Priest and 
Phatisee. This is true; but it cannot be denied 
that the former made no effort to save Him, but 
weakly and cowardly stood by when He was 
delivered into the hands of wicked men. 
Some of them may have even joined in the roar 
of execration at the last. It is nothing new for 
the hero of to-day to be the martyr of to-morrow. 


94 SDAYS OP THE SON SOREN 


“T lived for my country,” said Louis Kossuth, 
“and therefore I die in exile.” 

Christ well knew how fickle were the promises 
of men. “‘ The hour cometh and even now is, 
when ye shall leave Me alone.” Yet there 
is no wavering. In contrast to a “ drivelling 
generation’? He went forward steadfast to the 
end. 
So in our battle of life, whatever it be, whether 
in a great public struggle for righteousness or 
in a private fight with some secret sin or fear, 
we too have need of “the Kingdom of Christ’s 
patience.”” In every such battle there are ups 
and downs, Olivets of ringing cheers and Geth- 
semanes of bitter tears. At one hour you will 
have the palm branch waving round you and 
at another feel the chill shadow of the Cross ; 
and what you need, to steady your soul in the 
midst of such contrasts of experience is to fix 
your eyes on this Christ of Palm Sunday—to 
watch His calm face as He rides on amid the 
palm-waving crowd and sees beyond it “a little 
hill called Calvary,” . . . sees it, but does not 
flinch. 


CONTRASTS OF PALM SUNDAY 95 


Ill. Last of all there is a contrast here, between 
the Saviour approaching the most glorious, and Jeru- 
salem approaching the most shameful act in their 
respective histories. 

Christ was entering Jerusalem to die, but 
Puligettu was ) Elisa) ttiumph:  frue sare athe 
Betas. Ob \the: »Apostles) to) the: Hebrews, 
“Now we see Jesus, for the suffering of 
death, crowned with glory and honour.” 
The Cross was Christ’s Waterloo. I have 
spoken of these wonderful triumphal arches 
in Rome, how they stand in that old forum 
‘almost the only things erect amid a scene of 
ruin. 

Christ had no triumphal arch of that kind. 
All the tributes He received were the rustic 
offerings of simple peasants and the untutored 
sone of little children ; and yet He had a monu- 
ment too. This is His triumphal arch, this story 
which will never die, so long as Humanity 
lasts. No time’s decay will ever obliterate its 
inscription, no distance dim its mighty music, 
“Hosanna to the Son of David—Hosanna in 
the highest.” 


96 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


“Ride on! Ride on in majesty ! 
In lowly pomp ride on to die; 
Bow thy meek head to mortal pain, 
Then take, O God, Thy power, and reign.” 


It was Christ’s triumphal hour; but how 
different with the city through whose streets 
He was now passing. Little as she knew it, 
she was preparing for the darkest deed in her 
long history so mingled with glory and with 
shame. She was filling up the last drop in that 
cup which was to be poured out in terrible 
judgment on the coming generation. That 
city which had stoned so many of its prophets 
was now to make a final consummation of its 
wickedness by rejecting the last and greatest of 
all. 

‘While Jesus, by the Via Dolotosa, was thus 
matching on to glory, the city by the same road 
was matching to its doom. What to the one 
was a “savour of life unto life’ was to the 
other a “‘ savour of death unto death.” 

This contrast of the twofold influence of 
Christ is one which is always witnessed as the 
Lord Jesus Christ passes on in His triumph 


CONTRASTS OF PALM SUNDAY 97 


through the hearts of men. ‘That is the very 
lesson which Paul learns from the triumph of 
Jesus. You remember how beautifully he uses 
the pageant of a Roman triumph to illustrate 
the clory of the conquering Christ. “ Thanks 
be unto God,” he says to the Corinthians, “‘ Who 
always leadeth us in triumph in Christ . . . for 
we afe a sweet savour of Christ unto God, in 
them that are being saved and in them that are 
perishing ; to the one a savour from death unto 
death, to the other a savour from life unto 
mice: 

The twofold “ savour ” of those who ate led 
captive in the triumph of Christ is no doubt a 
reference to the most pathetic incident in the 
Roman triumph. Behind the conqueror there 
usually followed a train of specially selected 
captives, won by him in his wars. Some of 
these, when the journey’s end was reached, 
were set free to show forth the clemency of the 
| conqueror; while others were put to death to 
show his power. 

It is this twofold result of the triumph of 


Christ, Paul speaks of when he says, “‘ To them 
7 


98 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


that are being saved we are a savour of life unto 
life; to them that are perishing we are a savour 
of death unto death.” It was seen in Christ’s 
first triumph. ‘To Him and to His believers it 
was a savour of life unto life; but to Jerusalem 
and its priests it was a savour of death unto 
death. 

This is the last and greatest lesson we learn 
from the contrasts of Palm Sunday. ‘The Tri- 
umph of Jesus never ends. From age to age 
the King of Glory passes on His way; but still 
as in the past His triumph has a twofold signifi- 
cance. To some it is a savour of life unto life. 
To others of death unto death. Which is it 
with you and me? Are we to be among those 
cheering multitudes to whom He came as Saviour 
and Kine ; or are we to be among those scowling 
Priests and Scribes to whom His coming brought 
only death and destruction P 

“ Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, 
and he that believeth in Him shall not be con- 
founded; and whosoever shall fall on that 
stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it 
shall fall, it will grind him to powder!” 


CONTRASTS OF PALM SUNDAY 99 


God give us grace to make the wise decision, 
and as He this day passes before us to the Cal- 
vaty of His life, may it be outs to crown Him 
= ord) of all.”’ 


VIl 
THE GROUPS AROUND THE CROSS 
(For Good Friday) 


“And sitting down, they watched him there.”—Sr. Mart. 

xxvii. 36. 
THESE wotds complete the story of the Cross. 
The last act of the brutal soldiery has been done. 
The last insult has been heaped on the uncom- 
plainine spirits. ‘The last nail has been driven 
into the tender flesh. The Cross has been set 
upright. And so tired of their grim work and 
wishing doubtless to enjoy the pleasure of a fine 
spectacle, “‘ sitting down, they watched Him 
theres: 

There is something peculiarly solemn in a 
dying hour, something that betters the spirit of 
the most degraded and quickens the interest of 
the most indifferent. 


For one thing, death is ¢he end of time. What- 
100 


THE GROUPS AROUND THE CROSS 1o1 


ever of pretence or falsehood has marked the 
features of life’s actor till then, will now surely 
be laid aside. Now surely, if a man be real at 
all, he will, as he says good-bye to all life’s shams, 
be real. 

And then, for another thing, death is the begin- 
ning of eternity. I have tread somewhere of a 
man who committed suicide, urged simply by 
the motive of curiosity as to what would be 
“‘after it all was over.” A foolish and fatal 
adventure! And yet I must say that some- 
times as I have sat by the bedsides of the dying, 
this thought has come to me: “Soon, very 
soon, you too will know that secret which has 
bafled the minds of the wisest men in all ages, 


Lee. 


the secret of eternity 


But of all deaths which have engaged the 
interest of men, none has fascinated them like 
the death of Jesus Christ. What He prophesied 
about His death was wonderfully fulfilled, even 
at the moment when it took place, and it has 
been more and more fulfilled ever since. ‘I, 
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” 


oz DAYS OF THE ’SON OF MAN 


Gathered round His Cross, when it was first 
set up, there was a great multitude, including 
the most varied types of men, and as His life 
had never failed to awaken the most varied 
feelings, indifference, love, hatred and fear, so 
much mote was it with His death. Like a 
magnet, attractive to some metals, indifferent to 
others, repellent to a third, so strikingly did the 
last hours of the Saviour’s life proclaim each 
heart to itself if not to another as 


“ Sitting down, they watched Him there.” 


Let us look at those groups around the Cross. 
Once again the Cross is set up in our midst. 
Once again we are called to go back in memory 
to that “ green hill, far away,” and as it was in 
the past so is it still, the death of Christ awakens 
in the breast of those who remember it the most 
vatied feelings and proclaims to each one of us, 
as nothing else can do, what we are and what 
we shall be, as 


“ Sitting down, we watch Him there.” 


I. Our subject of meditation to-day is, there- 


—_— ———OrrS o~ 


THE GROUPS AROUND THE CROSS 103 


fore, the Spectators of Calvary ot the “ Groups 
around the Cross,’ and let us begin with that 
group to which our text specially refers, the 
Roman soldiers or the type of Indifference to the 
Cross. 

Had these soldiers had eyes to see, they 
would have realized that the spectacle before 
them was peculiarly sublime. He who was 
one of the noblest of characters in His age was 
now dying a death of the most unparalleled 
patience and heroism and love that they had 
evet witnessed in their long experience. They 
had seen many die, more or less bravely; but 
where had they ever seen a man who ptayed 
for his murderers and spoke no word but love 
to his torturers ? 

) Soren times He spake, seven words of love ; 


And all three hours His silence cried 
For mercy on the souls of men. 


] ?? 


Jesus, out Lord, is crucified 


Yet to all this these soldiers were absolutely 
indifferent. To them it was but the death of 
an ordinary Jewish fanatic. There was only 
one thing about Him in which they were inter- 


104 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


ested. \ It. was His clothes. \ The sclothesmaan 
the Carpenter of Nazareth! And so taking 
a shield and turning it on its back they began 
to tattle the dice upon it, gambling for - His 
“vesture,” poor though it be, gambling at the 
vety foot of the Cross. 
A sttange contrast surely! Above hangs 
One, Who even in the world’s judgment has 
been reckoned one of the noblest of the sons 
of men. He is dying a death of the noblest 
character, the death of a Martyr to truth, and 
He is doing it in the spirit of the noblest for- 
titude and the most marvellous love; so that 
the very record of it read by malefactors in later 
ages has broken their hearts and brought them 
to God; and yet to all this, these men are so 
utterly callous that there is only one thing about 
which they can think of, who is to get the 
clothes which He leaves behind? “ They parted 
My garments among them, and for my vesture 
did they cast lots.” 

A strange contrast; and yet shall we say it 


1 The story of ‘‘ A Gentleman in Prison,” by Rev. John Kelman, 
Ds 


THE GROUPS AROUND THE CROSS 10; 


is utterly without a parallel to-day 2. How many 
there are in this city to-day to whom the Cross 
of Calvary is a matter of no importance! Nay ; 
ate there not some who come to the Lord’s 
Table from deeper sins even than gambling and 
take into their hands that are red with crime, 
the symbols of His broken body and shed blood ? 


IJ. That then is the innermost group around 
the Cross, the citcle of absolute and even brutal 
indifference. The second is that of open and 
now triumphant hatred. 

A little out from the soldiers and yet gathered 
as Closely as the authorities will allow are the 
representatives of the Chief Priest and Scribes. 
Probably the High Priest himself is not there. 
It would be beneath his dignity; but all his 
party are there. And a very happy party they 
ate. Itis their hour of triumph. ‘Their highest 
hopes have been fulfilled. He Who was their 
adversaty in life and said such bitter things about 
them, He has now got His deserts. Let Him 
try to save Himself now as He was so able to 
do it before with his quick tongue and diabolical 


106 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


miracles! But no, His power is all gone now. 
The self-styled Messiah! What a tragic end to 
His pretensions! “ He saved others; Himself 
He cannot save.” 

So they mocked Him and in their mockery 
gave Him an unconscious tribute of highest 
praise. As some of the noblest names that men 
have ever worn in history were originally nick- 
names, given in contempt or derision, as such 
epithets as “Christian,” ‘* Huguenot” and 
“* Methodist”? were at first flung in scorn at 
those who were afterwards to make them 
glotious names, so no truer word of praise was 
evet spoken of Christ in His death than this, 
‘Hex saves. others; Himself He cannotmsamem: 
For this is always the mark of the highest love, 
that in saving others, it will not, cannot, save 
itself; cannot come down from the Cross, can- 
not turn away from these piercing nails, that 
Crown of thorns, that riven side. No: because 
He saves others, Himself He cannot save. Let us 
remember that great law of sacrifice, when we 
ate called on by Love to do a task that seems 
too hard. “‘ Without shedding of blood there 


THE GROUPS AROUND THE CROSS 107 


is no remission.”? Without a sacrifice that is 


33 


“supreme ”’ the highest victories of love can 


nevet be achieved. 


III. And now we come to the third group of 
those who gathered round that Cross, the circle. 
of his friends and disciples. 

One is glad to think that in the hour of His 
dying agony Jesus was not all alone. Although 
the disciples had all forsaken Him at the supreme 
hour of His need, and, with one exception, we 
read no record of them being present at the Cru- 
cifixion; there was one section of His followers 
which did not fail Him. ‘The women, as has been 
said, were more manly than the men, and we ate 
told that “many women were there beholding 
Him afar off.’ Among these ate mentioned 
““ Maty Magdalene and Mary the mother of 
James the less and Salome.” These holy women 
had followed Him from Galilee and did the 
cooking for the band when they were camping 
out for the night. They now beheld Him “ afar 
off.” ‘Timidity prevented them mingling with 
the crowd but love prevented them from going 


1o8 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


away. Fascinated, terrified, broken-hearted, 
they form the third circle around the Cross, 
that of Love without Hope. 

And there was one, who was yet to come yet 
nearer and whom no terror was to withhold 
from pressing close to the bleeding Saviour. 
This was the New Testament Rizpah, with a 
sorrow deeper than hers, because she was there 
to witness not only His corpse but His dying 
sufferings and the sufferings of a malefactor as 
well, the sufferings of one who was “ numbered 
with the transgressors.” And so we tread in 
the sublimely simple words of John: 


“And there stood beside the cross of Jesus his mother.” 


John says no more than that. But it is 
sufficient. It presents before us the most poig- 
nant picture in all the Bible, the Mother of Jesus 
beholding the dying sufferings of her Son. 

She had apparently come later than the other 
women to the scene. Probably they had tried 
to keep it from her, till hearing of it accidentally 
she had rushed to John and pled with him to 
take her to her Son. Perhaps she might save 


THE GROUPS AROUND THE CROSS 109 


Him yet! At all events let Him not die without 
a Mother’s kiss! Alas! it was all too late. 
When they had reached the spot the Cross was 
already set up. Christ was already lifted up far 
beyond her reach in other arms than a mothet’s, 
in the arms of a cruel cross. 

But she would be near Him and so, pressing 
through enemies and soldiers alike, she makes 
her way, followed by John and Mary Magdalene 
to the Cross. “‘ There stood by the Cross of 
Jesus His Mother!” 

It was a poignant situation; too poignant 
for Jesus long to endure. Signing to John to 
take her away He gave her a majestic and yet 
loving farewell, resigning her into the trust of 
the man He loved most on earth. “ Lady’ 
behold thy son!” “ Son, behold thy Mother ! ” 

It must have been sweet to the Saviour on 
the Cross to see that these women were so loyal 
and loving to the last and yet there was one 
thing He missed in their loyalty and love. He 
missed the note of faith. As He looked into 
their faces He could see there only the note of 
commiseration and hopeless anguish. 


tio. DAYS: OF ‘THE: SON: OF Mal 


This was not the note Christ wanted to 
hear from His followers as He went forth to die. 
Except for a moment near the last it was not 
the note He heard from His own heart. Nos; 
it was the note of triumph. ‘“ Daughters of 
Jerusalem, weep not for me!” “‘ Father, for- 
give them, for they know not what they do!” 
“ Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit.” 
‘“* It is finished ;”’ these are not the words of a 
hopeless man. On the contrary they speak of 
calm and peace and victory. That He must 
die as the Sacrifice for sin, as the Divine Paschal 
Lamb, He had been trying to teach them for 
many months. And now it was all in vain. 
It was vety disappointing. 


IV. Was there then none at all in all these 
spectators of the Cross, who entered into its 
meaning and saw beyond its sorrow and seeming 
failure to the joy set before it, and to the triumph 
it was to win? 

Yes, there was one. One only; and he per- 
haps the unlikeliest man in all that crowd, aye, 
in all Jerusalem, to penetrate into the mystery 


tiie GROUPS AROUNDYTHE CROSS riz 


of the Cross. “ And there was crucified with 
Him two thieves.” And one of them reviled 
Him saying, “If Thou be the Christ, save Thy- 
Bem@eandrus 7; but the other said, *? Lord: re- 
member me in that day when Thou comest in 
Thy Kingdom.” And Jesus said unto him, 
“Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be 
with Me in Paradise.” 

Of all the wonders of the Cross, there is per- 
haps none more wonderful than the faith of the 
Penitent Thief. It is wonderful when we think 
of its source. As Tholuck says: “ Never did 
the new birth take place in so strange a cradle.” 
It is still more wonderful when we think of its 
greatness. “How clear,” says Calvin, “ was 
the vision of these eyes, which could thus see 
in death life, in ruin majesty, in shame glory, 
in defeat victory.” It must have been a tare 
cordial to Christ on the Cross; better far than 
the wine they put to His parched lips, better 
far than the sympathy of those who sorrowed 
for Him as if they had no hope. As Luther 
says, “ This, for Christ, was a comfort greater 
than the angels gave Him at Gethsemane, When 


112 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


the faith of Peter breaks down, the faith of the 
dying thief begins.” 


What is the lesson which these several groups 
around the Cross leave with us to-day? Surely 
this, that the only true approach to the Cross is 
the Approach of Faith, We have seen that 
there are four ways in which we may regard 
the Sacrifice of Calvary, Apathy, Antipathy, 
Sympathy and Faith. There are but few to-day 
who are hostile to the historic Christ, though 
there are not a few who write things about Him 
which are full of contempt of His claims, while 
they profess to admire His character. But there 
ate not a few who, while they are nominally 
sympathetic to the Story of the Cross, are sadly 
apathetic to its message and its challenge. ‘The 
wotds of the prophet represent too much the 
attitude of multitudes to-day both inside the 
Church and out of it: “Is it nothing to you, 
all ye that pass by ? Come, behold and see! 
Is there any sorrow like unto My sorrow ?” 

Sympathy with the story of the Cross there 
may be and is; but a sympathy for one who 


THE GROUPS AROUND THE CROSS 113 


died two thousand yeats ago is too apt to become 
a practical apathy, if not a cold indifference. 
What we need to kindle enthusiasm at the Cross 
is, the faith that He Who died there died for me 
and that He lives still to bless me as He did those 
who gathered round His Cross with believing 
love in the days of His flesh. Such a faith has 
sofrow in it no doubt to begin with, but it is 
a sottow that passes into joy; it is a sorrow 
whose tears end in a song; “ Unto Him that 
loveth us and hath washed us from our sins in 
His own blood, unto Him be the glory.” 

May such a faith be yours and mine as “ sit- 
ting down, we watch Him there.” 


VIII 
THE GARDEN OF SORROW AND VICTORY 
(For Good Friday) 
# Now inithe place where he yras crucified thersiyaananeeeae 
and in the garden a new sepulchre . . . there laid they Jesus.”— 


Sd. JOHN XIX.’ Ar. 


Ir is surely not without significance that the 
Apostle John tells us here that 
where Jesus was crucified there was a garden.” 


Ge Ss 


in the place 


We read in Scripture of many gardens. It was 
in a garden, the Bible placed man at the first, 
thereby signifying his primeval innocence. ‘The 
beauty of the fair environment without was 
meant to be appropriate to the moral love- 
liness within. 

But there was a serpent in that garden, and 
so it became a wilderness. 

Thus in the story of redemption we come 
naturally to another garden. It is the garden 


of Gethsemane, where fainting under the shadow 
114 


THE GARDEN OF SORROW 115 


of the olive trees, Jesus won the great victory of 
the spirit and planted the Passion-flower of 
resignation to the Father’s Will. It is natural 
that as the first Adam lost his birthright in a 
garden, so the second Adam “ should in a garden 
win it back.” 

That, we say, is appropriate; but is it quite 
the same, when we read here “ in the place where 
he was crucified there was a garden”? Is not 
our first thought, as we read these words, one 
of disharmony ? How unsuitable, that the gentle 
flowers should fill the air with their fragrance 
and beauty in the place where, amidst the clamour 
of wicked men and under the shadow of a great 
darkness, our Lord was put to a cruel death. 
Surely, there is a sense of incongruity in such a 
thought ? 

It is as when some great sorrow has darkened 
yout days and “all that life seemed meant for 
fails,’ you awake next morning to find the 
sunshine flooding your room as if nothing had 
happened! Nature seems so unresponsive to 
your pain! So as we see this garden round the 
Cross and watch the flowers blooming gaily, 


116) DAYS OF THE SOND OF DOAN 


where the greatest tragedy of History is being 
enacted, we are tempted to say, “O flowers, 
shut your bright petals! Hang your flaunting 
heads! ‘This is no place for you! Rather bid 
thy fragrance become a wilderness and thy rose 
a desert, for this is the place where thy Lord 
was crucified | ” | 

At least it proves one thing—does it not >— 
that they greatly err who imagine that the sove- 
reign cure for man’s ills is just a fair environment 
and that parks and picture galleries and music 
will make man good by simply thinking of the 
beautiful. These things have a place in human 
culture, and it is a large one, but that place is 
not to be a cure to the sins of the human heart. 
As an antidote to evil in the past, they have been, 
as in Ancient Greece and Renaissant Italy, an 
utter failure. You cannot cute cancer with a 
flower. 


But while our first thought as we tead 
these words is one of incongruity between the 
scenery and its scene, is not our second one, and 
the best, one of és essential harmony and fitness ? 


THE GARDEN OF SORROW 117 


Wherever the Cross has been planted in the 
soil of human life, it has always made it a garden. 
Jesus was mistaken for a Gardener long ago 
and there is, as Spurgeon has said, a deep truth in 
the superficial error. “ Christ is the true Gardener 
of human souls and wherever His Cross has 
been uplifted, there have bloomed around it the 
Passion-flowets of repentance, the Roses of Love 
and the Lilies of Purity. The planting of the 
Cross in the midst of a garden long ago, has been 
a true prophecy of all the ages. Bring Him 
into your life and it shall be fulfilled in yours, 
If it has been made a wilderness by the scorching 
winds of animal passion or by the wintry blasts 
of pain and sorrow, yet even so to you the old 
prophecy will be fulfilled, “ The wilderness and 
the solitary place shall be glad for them and 
the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.” 


But our text reminds us further that there 
was not only a Cross in this Garden but a Sepulchre 
as well, “a new sepulchre where never man was 
laid.” 


Once again our first impression is one of 


118 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


disharmony. We should scarcely expect to 
find a grave in the midst of a garden. The . 
two do not correspond. Yet after all is it 
not true to life? Death lurks everywhere ; 
beneath the beautiful as much as beneath the 
ugly. 

Huxley writes in his biography to a friend, 
“Tam staying amongst some of the fairest scenes 
of nature. All around is beautiful. It speaks 
of a good God; but yet I suppose if I listened 
closely, I should hear beneath this beauty of life, 
the cry of pain and death.” 

Perhaps, on some fair morn, you have climbed 
an eminence in a beautiful landscape and looked 
out across a scene of tare beauty. Wood and 
water, forest-clad hill and flower-spread valley, 
combined to a perfect whole. Yet on reflection 
you knew that beneath all “death was busy 
evetywhere.” The spider was catching the 
unwary fly, the serpent unhooding his poisoned 
fang, the hawk swooping on the gentle dove. 
Animal was preying on animal and man upon all. 
And Death was preying on man! See yonder 
flower-embosomed cottage. Could there be a 


THE GARDEN OF SORROW 119 


fairer spot for human life to dwell in? Yet, 
note, how from its portals, the black coffin 
issues forth and the slow funeral procession 
creeps to the quiet churchyard. Yes, as Huxley 
says, you may not hear it; but it is there to hear 
if you bend closer, “the still sad music of 
humanity.” In every garden of the world there 
is a sepulchre. 

Yet, while that is true, thank God it is not 
all the truth. Look closer and behold this 
sepulchte. Is it a grave of hopeless sorrow ? 
Nay, it 1s a grave that has been rifled of its tenant ! 
Its gates have been broken down and by its 
portals sits an angel, saying: “ Why seek the 
living among the dead? Behold the place 
where the Lord lay ;” but where now He lies 
no mote. 

Yes, this grave in the garden is no symbol 
of despair. Its situation here is no mockery of 


human joy. Rather does it speak of triumph 
and comfort. As we see the flowers blooming 


round it, we see no incongruous sight; rather 
one of beautiful harmony. “Bloom on, ye 
flowers,”’ that empty grave seems to say, “ and 


120 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


bloom round all human graves that have been 
sanctified by Me.” 

This empty sepulchre empties all other Chris- 
tian eraves of their blank despair, turning them 
indeed into gateways of Life and Hope and 
Immottality. 

I have mentioned Huxley and how he only 
heard the cry of pain beneath the loveliness of 
nature; but the deeper science and philosophy 
of to-day teaches us a nobler hope. According 
to Bergson, amid all this loss and pain a vital 
force is steadily working through nature up to 
man and through man to immortality. ‘The 
faith of Tennyson is being more and more 
justified by the doctrine of creative evolution : 


“That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
That not a worm is cloven in vain, 
That not a moth with vain desire, 
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire ; 
Or but conserves another’s gain.” 


Yes, it was in the highest degree suitable that 
in the place where Jesus was crucified there 
should be a garden, and that in that garden there 
should also be a sepulchre ; an empty sepulchre 


THE GARDEN OF SORROYW _. 1a1 


saying to all mourning hearts: ‘“‘ O death, where 
is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 
The sting of death is sin. But thanks be unto 
God Who giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ.” 


In closing, note one practical thought. This 
grave was a gift of love. 

It was provided by Joseph’s loving hands 
and he gave the best he could give, for it was 
a new sepulchre. No corruption had ever 
soiled its dark precincts before and none after- 
wards spoke of its brief tenancy. Jesus gave 
it back to Joseph as fresh as He got it and in- 
finitely more glorious. He always does so. 
Whatever we give to Him, He returns fifty-fold. 

Brothers, there ate many gifts we can give 
to Christ; but there is one of which perhaps 
you have never thought before. It is the one 
suggested by our text: You can give Christ your 
graves. “A grave!” you say. How can any- 
one give Him that? He needs no gtave. He 
is the ever-living One. He needs no gift of 
that kind any mote. 


122 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


No, not in that sense. Not as denizen of it. 
Not as one to fill it, but as a Gardener to tend 
it and beautify it and adorn it. Mary was right 
when she “ supposed Him to be the Gardener.” 
He is the Gardener of all human graves ever 
since. Give Him then the grave in which your 
loved ones are lying. He will care for it. He 
will cover it over with the flowers of faith and 
hope. He will give it you back, made beautiful 
with this word written over it—‘‘ Because I 
live ye shall live also.” 

And there is another deep grave, too, which 
we can give to Jesus, it is the grave of sin, the 
sepulchre in which our past sins are lying. 

In Bunyan’s Story of the Cross, you all remem- 
ber the striking picture of the burden breaking 
from Christian’s back, as he caught sight of the 
Cross, and falling down and down the hill till it 
reached an open grave, “‘ where it fell in,” says 
Bunyan, “and I saw it no more.” Then was 
Christian glad and sang: 

““Blest Cross! Blest Sepulchre! Nay, blessed be 
The Man that there was put to shame for Me.” 


Bunyan is tight. I have said, “ Give Him 


THE GARDEN OF SORROW © 123 


the grave in which your past ones are buried ” ; 
but it would be truer to say, that Jesus Himself 
provides that grave. We only give Him the 
cotpse to fill it. For that grave is the new 
sepulchre from which He rose for our Justifica- 
tion. When our sins fall into that grave we 
see them no mote. They are buried deep in 
the grave of God’s forgetfulness. 

Do you feel the burden of your sin heavy 
to-day ? Look then to that Cross where so 
many thousands are looking to-day all over the 
wotld in faith and love and finding peace by that 
look. You, too, will find that He can heal you 
of your “ Self-despising.” “ The blood of Jesus 
Christ His son cleanseth thee from all sins.” 
That is what God’s voice is saying to you in 
the Garden of the Sepulchre to-day. 

Or is your burden not so much one of sin’s 
guilt and shame as of its cruel crushing power ? 
You have been bearing perhaps for years a 
cottupting corpse of evil habit on your back, 
saying, like Paul, “‘O wretched man, who shall 
deliver me from this body of death?” 

Come then, weaty struggler, to this grave. 


124 DAYS’ OF THE SON  OFVMAN 


Climb up the hill to where the Cross is standing, 
casting its shadow deep upon it. Look to that 
Cross in faith and as you do so say, “‘ He was 
wounded there for my transgressions. ‘The 
chastisement of my peace was upon Him. With 
His stripes I am healed”’; and it may be that 
God will manifest the power of His blood to 
you in such a way that these galling thongs of 
habit will crack their strings from your emanci- 
pated shoulders and from your spirit will fall 
that burden of death which has bound itself to 
you for so many years. 

Oh, the joy of that vision! Then indeed shall 
you feel how appropriate it is that Christ’s Cross 
and Sepulchre should have been placed in a 
garden. Fora garden it is to you, whose memory 
will ever cheer you as you journey along life’s 
dusty way, and enable you to say to yourself, 
“Tn the place where my Lord was crucified, 
there was a garden, and its flowers never fade.” 


IX 
SEEKING CHRIST IN THE WRONG PLACE 
(For Easter Day) 


“Why seek ye the living among the dead ?””—ST. LUKE xxiv. 5. 


THERE is a comfort in these words all the more 
exultant in that it is couched in the language of 
remonstrance. Sometimes the best comfort you 
can give to a mourner is a tender rebuke. Tell 
a man that the fears he fears are foolish ; reproach 
him with incredulity in refusing to credit what 
he longs to believe ; chide him with hypochondria 
for cherishing a nervousness he ardently desires 
to telinquish and you often administer the wisest 
medicine you can give toa mind diseased. ‘Thus, 
when the angel chides these poor women with 
this question, we can well believe it was sweeter 
than all music to their souls. It turned for them 
“the shadow of death into the morning.” 


But have these words no message for us? 
125 


126° DAYS OF THE SON; OF Whi 


Surely they have. ‘Though so many centuries 
have gone by since it was first proclaimed to 
an astonished world that Christ was risen, there 
ate still not a few within our churches and multi- 
tudes outside of it, who seek the living Christ 
among the dead. ‘They bring their spices and 
ointments to a corpse, instead of their joyous 
love to a living Lord. They seek for a Christ 
Who should be living, among the dead. 


I. Is not this, for example, the case with those 
who ask us to believe in a Christanity that has no 


room for miracles in it? 

'“ The great Companion is dead,” was the 
rematk of Prof. Romanes to a friend, speaking 
out of a time when the impact of scientific law 
on his mind had driven the possibility of miracle 
out of his beliefs. ‘The great Companion is 
dead.” ‘To him Nature was now robbed of one 
of its sweetest Presences. ‘There was no room 
for the working of a living, loving Personality 
amidst the phenomena of matter. All was cold 
mechanical law. There was no mind, no pur- 
pose behind it all. It was a great emptiness to 


SEEKING CHRIST 127 


him. Though his thinking compelled him to 
believe it so, he felt bereaved of the sweetest 
thought which had before informed his study 
of Natute. “The great Companion is dead. tes 

There are many ‘like him in all our churches. 
They follow Christ to His Tomb with rever- 
ential love. They admire His teaching and may 
even imitate His example. They are moved by 
His Cross but further they cannot go. The 
Christ they honour is a dead Christ. ‘“‘ Upon 
His grave the Syrian Stars look down.” “ His 
dust is blown about the desert sands.” And 
thus bereaved, the thought of Christ gives them 
no teal comfort. He was a great teacher like 
Socrates or Buddha: nothing more. To speak 
of inspiration from His present fellowship is to 
use the language of faith but not of reason; 
of love but not of truth. 

The novelist De Morgan tells in one of his 
stories of an old lady who after the death of her 
husband read only two books, the Vicar of Wake- 
field and the New Testament. When her friend 
found her reading the latter, she would look 
over her shoulders and observed it was always 


128, DAYS OR “STHEVSON: OF iA 


one part of it she was reading: the last two 
chapters of St. John. “ You see, darling,” she 
_ said, “‘it may really be true. Not just like going 
to Church to listen to what you don’t believe 
always.” The main current of her thoughts 
was this: “‘ Would she meet her beloved hus- 
band in the future world again?” Was all 
this true of only jan idiestale si 

In the uncertainty of her faith she is a type 
of many to-day. Oh, that to such honest 
doubters, one might say in tones not of severity 
but of earnest entreaty, ““ Why seek ye the living 
among the dead?” Why love a Christ Who 
taught you such noble comforting truths and 
yet tefuse to believe Him when He plainly fore- 
told His Resurrection? Why honour His dis- 
ciples and yet regard them as fools or knaves 
when they bore witness to that Resurrection ? 
Why believe in a Power working for Righteous- 
ness in the world and yet conclude that the 
grandest movement for Righteousness in history 
is a lie? Why shut your eyes to the Salvation 
from Sin and Sorrow, which this Gospel of a 
risen Saviour has brought to many like your- 


SEEKING CHRIST 129 


selves, and yet steel your minds against its accep- 
tance by your heart and will? So long at least 
as you do so, you will receive no comfort from 
reading about Christ. ‘To such seekers He must 
say as He said of old: ‘‘ Ye search the Scriptures 
because ye think that ye have in them eternal 
life and ye will not come to Me that ye might 
have life.” 

He is not there, not even in the last two chap- 
ters of St. John’s Gospel! “ Heistisen. Why 
seek ye the living among the dead?” ‘You can 
find Him only, if find Him you would, in the 
experience of your own heart; in the revelation 
which the Holy Spirit can alone give you there 
of a Christ Who is as living to-day as when the 
Angel voices said to the Holy Women long ago 
—“ Why seek ye the living among the dead ?” 


II. Once again, the remonstrance of our text 
may be directed against those who while accepting 
a Risen Christ in their creed, treat Him as if He 
were dead in their daily life. 

Their conduct gives the lie to the faith which 
their creed expresses. The Christ they worship 

9 


130 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 

has no more influence on their lives than if He 
were a mummy as old as the corpse of Tutunk- 
hamen. Christ is buried for them in a grave of 
formalism and their hearts are as arid as the 
valley of dry bones which the prophet saw in 
his vision. They pay outward honouts to the 
creed of Christendom but the Christ they wor- 
ship is a corpse. 

Travellers to the Holy Sepulchre at Eastertide 
tell us that the scene which is enacted there every 
Easter morning is one of the most extraordinary 
caricatures of Christianity that could be wit- 
nessed. Beneath a vast dome is a grotto, where 
the reputed sepulchre of Christ is declared to 
be. Thither at midnight a vast crowd of pil- 
erims from all lands are gathered. Each of 
these has supplied himself with a huge candle, 
which he has bought from the Priests-in-charge, 
at an exorbitant price. Exactly at midnight a 
light is seen to burst from the dark tomb. It 
is declared by the Priests to descend from 
heaven, though every intelligent man knows 
this to be a lie. But the poor peasants devoutly 
believe it is a sacred fire sent down by God to 


SEEKING CHRIST 131 


verify the ancient miracle. Each one presses 
forwatd to get his candle illuminated at the 
sacred fire and great is his joy when often at the 
tisk of being crushed to death he does so. 

Yet the strange and the sad thing is that these 
poor people know as little about the teaching 
of Jesus as that of Mohammed. Their lives are 
unclean; their habits are degrading. They are 
filled with spite and hatred of their fellowmen 
and sometimes there are the most terrible riots 
at the tomb ending in bloodshed between the 
tival sects. It is a sad sight to see soldiers keep- 
ing guard over these Christians lest they should 
love one another so much as to cut their throats. 

They worship a Christ of a kind; but while 
one would not care to judge them too harshly, 
one cannot but feel it is a dead Christ, a Christ 
of dogma ;—orthodox but inoperative, buried 
in a grave of formalism and in some cases of 
hypocrisy. 

But not different is it with ourselves, if the 
Christ we profess to serve has no real influence 
on our life. Such a Christ for us is dead. If 
Christ be living for us He must be a Christ we 


132) DAYS OF THE) SON (OF MAN 


setve and follow. “If ye then be risen with 
Christ, set your affections on the things that ate 
above, where Christ is seated at the right hand 
or Godin 


III. Once more we may seek the living Christ 
among the dead, by imprisoning His Spirit in a 
grave of unprogressive traditionalism, that has no 
outlook to the future. 

If Christ is living, this surely means that He 
lives in the Church of to-day and is therefore 
leading her on to ever higher and grander con- 
ceptions of His truth. 

When John Bright was growing old he became 
increasingly reminiscent in his style of address 
and was always dwelling on the triumphs of 
the days of Free Trade. After one of these 
speeches, a man was heard to say: “ All right, 
Mr. Bright ; but tell us something about to-day. 
That’s what we want to know.” 

If Christ is to be a living force in the life of 
to-day, He must have something to tell us about 
the present. And Hehas. ‘There is no preacher 
so up-to-date as the Lord Jesus Christ. Men 


SEEKING CHRIST 13.2 


ate only beginning to learn how modern He is. 
Tolstoi once said of the Russian political situa- 
tion: “ What is needed for Russia to-day is 
fresh application of the teaching of Jesus.” The 
same is true of the present political situation. 
If men could only stoop down to listen to the 
living Christ half the evils from which our poor 
wotld is suffering to-day would disappear. 

Yet what do our ecclesiasticisms do too often 
with Christ? They wrap Him up in the grave- 
clothes of the past. They imprison Him in a 
hoaty tomb nineteen centuries old and say, “ All 
we can know of Christ is there. What is new 
cannot be true. What is true cannot be new. 
You must go back to the teaching of the Refor- 
mation, or the Ante-Nicene Church, or the New 
Testament disciples. There and there alone can 
you find the truth.” 

There is, of course, a certain truth in such 
an attitude. The principles which Christ im- 
planted are final. As one has said, “ They no 
more need tevising than the Multiplication 
Table. Take the principle expressed by St. 
John in the words, God is love, and tegard it 


134 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


as one which is to govern conduct and educa- 
tion. We cannot really see in it some partial 
expression of truth which human wisdom will 
outgrow. Common sense compels us either 
to think that it is definitely misleading, as it has 
actually been said to be by philosophers recently, 
or that it is the whole truth and that there is 
nothing more to be said about the subject for 
ever. If we hold it true we hold it final.” 1 \ 
Nevertheless, all this is aside from the fact, 
that religious truth requites a new restatement 
in every age. The categories of thought vary 
in every generation and what satisfied the mind 
of the sixteenth century or the third century 
cannot satisfy the mind of to-day, and to think 
that it must, seems to me to be nothing less than 
imptisoning a living Christ amid the sepulchres 
of the dead. Believing, as we profess to do, in 
a living Christ, we ought to believe in a Christ 
Who is moving in the minds of men to-day, 
leading them on to new and higher conceptions 
of the Truth. To believe in anything less is 
to disbelieve in the Holy Spirit. He has come 
1Lord Charnworth, According to St. Fohn. 


SEEKING > CHRIST 135 


to the Church to be the interpreter of Christ, 
and to fetter Him with the grave clothes of 
tradition is to seek the living among the dead. 


TV. Last of all we have in these words a 
temonstrance with shose gloomy and melancholy 
Christians who while they profess to believe in this 
Faster Message, bring none of its victory into their 
life. 

The Resutrection note is one of joy and peace. 
The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 
They returned from the Ascension Mount where 
they had bidden His earthly presence farewell, 
“with great joy ”’ and that joy prevails through- 
out the whole New Testament. “ Whom having 
not seen ye love,” says Peter, “in whom though 
now ye see Him not yet believing, ye rejoice 
with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” 

Great then is the disservice we do to Christ, 
when we minister to Him only with the spices 
of the dead and fail to give him the flowers of 
the living. Great is the evil we do not merely 
to ourselves but also to others if we go about 
our duties with gloomy, sour and downcast 


136 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


faces instead of serving the Lord with gladness. 

Matthew Arnold tells in one of his sonnets 
how one hot August afternoon he wandered 
down to the wilderness of East London. It 
was a weaty day and every face he saw there in 
that joyless land “looked thrice dispirited.” 
But as he wandered on from one unlovely street 
to another, he suddenly encountered a face that 
was happy and strong. It was that of an old 
college friend and he could not help asking him 
what it was that made him so happy in these 
depressing surroundings. 
“‘T met a preacher there I knew, and said, 

‘ Tired and o’erworked, how fare you in this scene P ’ 
‘Bravely,’ said he, ‘for I of late have been 
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ the living 
Bread) 

And then he goes on to add his admiration of 
a cteed he cannot accept : 
“© human soul! as long as thou canst so 


Set up a mark of everlasting light 
Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow, 


To cheer thee and to right thee if thou roam— 
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night! _ 
Thou mak’st the heaven thou hop’st indeed thy home.” - 


SEEKING CHRIST Tey 


Let us make the risen Christ the living bread 
of our daily life and then we will know some- 
thing of the joy which filled the hearts of the 
eatly disciples when they saw their risen Lord 
and believed that He was speaking the truth 
when He said to them, “ Lo, I am with you all 
the days, even to the end of the world.” 


x 


THE YOUNG MAN AT THE EMPTY TOMB 
(For Easter Day) 


‘«¢ Entering into'the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the 
right side, clothed in a long white garment.” —ST. Mark xvi. 5. 


As the holy women drew near the sepulchte on 
that first Easter morning they were troubled 
with this question, “‘ Who shall roll us away 
the stone?” For the stone was very great and 
it was sealed with the Royal Seal, placed there 
at the exptess desire of the Priests, lest the dis- 
ciples should steal away the body and pointing 
to the empty tomb declare that the prophecy of 
their Master had been fulfilled, “ On the third 
day He shall rise again.” 

Who shall roll us away the stone? It is a 
significant question and its echoes reverberate 
through hearts bereaved in every age. That 


stone, exceeding in its greatness, is a symbol of 
138 


ATY THER EMPTY LOMB 139 


the grave stones which lie over all the graves 
of human love which are spread over the vast 
cemeteries of the world. Philosophy and Science 
have alike tried to roll that stone away and tell 
us what shall be—“‘after death.” But all in 
vain. The answer they give is at best “a 
solemn hope.” ‘They are well represented in 
the dying words of John Sterling in his last 
letter to Carlyle, “‘ I tread the common road into 
the great darkness, without any thought of fear 
and with very much of hope. Certainty I have 
none.” 

But what is too great for Philosophy to accom- 
plish, is not too much for faith. “ And when 
they looked, they saw that the stone was tolled 
away, for it was exceeding great.”’ Notice that 
curious conjunction “for.” We would natur- 
ally write “although.” And some critics have 
indeed tried to make better sense of it by placing 
the clause, after the question, ‘‘ Who shall roll 
us the stone away? for it was vety great.” 

But I like the treading as it stands. Mark 
knew what he was doing. He means to tell us 
that it was the very fact of the stone being so 


140 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


great that caused the Angel not only to roll it 
away but to keep it thus unrolled. God helps 
those who cannot help themselves. And the 
lesson is, that if we go straight up to our dif—i- 
culties, however great they may seem, with 
unfaltering faith, we shall find them dissolve 
away on our nearer approach. “‘ The stone was 
tolled away, for it was very gteat.” 


But the special point in the story on which 
I would dwell this Easter morning, is Mark’s 
picture of the Annunciant of the Resurrection. 
He is described as “‘a young man sitting on the 
right side, clothed in a long white garment.” 

Mark is the only evangelist who tells us this, 
and we are glad he has done so because it teaches 
us certain truths about the Gospel of the Resur- 
rection which are fresh and beautiful and inspir- 
ing. 


I. First of all we note che youthfulness of the 
first preacher of the Resurrection. 

Is there not something significant in that 
factP When Christ came to our world He 


AT THE EMPTY TOMB IAI 


found it very old and weary. ‘The best days of 
Israel and Greece and even of Rome seemed to 
many to have passed away. It was an age of 
sad disillusion to the patriotic Jew. The glorious 
times of David and Solomon and even of Ezra 
and Nehemiah seemed to have for ever passed 
away. ‘The nation was held fast in the thraldom 
of Rome and groaned under the cruelties of 
Idumean foreigners and the rapacities of Roman 
Govetrnots. 

Greece too looked back on the glorious times 
of Salamis and Thermopylae, on the splendid 
genius of the days of Sophocles and Euripides, 
of Socrates and Plato and felt sadly that for all 
the patronage of Roman Governors, it was 
“living Greece no more.” And even Rome 
itself, though she sat on the throne of universal 
power, groaned under the sinister sway of a 
Tiberius whose datk soul plotted death upon 
every free-born spirit and looked back amidst 
the corruption of the times to the freedom and 
vittue of the Republic. 


“Deep weariness and sated lust 
Made human life a hell.” 


12 DAYS OF THE SONORA 


And her best writers looked back regretfully to 
a golden age in the past, and forward with gloomy 
feats to a future in which all that was best in 
human life would perish in a cataclysm of blood 
and fire. 


“The world was very evil, 
The times were waxing late.” 


But with this death hour of history there came 
the message of a new tesurrection from the dead 
past, which changed it all. ‘‘ Thou hast turned 
our sunsets into sunrises,” says Clement of 
Alexandria, speaking of the new hope which 
had visited all their hearts by the message “‘ He 
is risen.” “ Young men saw visions.” “Old 
men dreamed dreams.” Old things had passed 
away. All things were made new. 

Now it is in testimony to this rejuvenating 
power in the Christian Gospel that Mark paints 
the first preacher of the Resurrection as a young 
man. It is meant as a symbol and a prophecy 
of what the faith in the risen Christ was to 
accomplish in the hearts of all who accepted it. 
“ Even the youths,” it seems to say, “ shall faint 


AT THE EMPTY TOMB 143 


and grow weaty and the young men shall utterly 
fall, but they that wait on the Lord shall renew 
their strength. They shall mount up with wings 
as eagles, they shall run and not be weary and 
they shall walk and not faint.” 

And is not that a message for every age? Is 
it not one for us peculiarly to-day. There is a 
sense of gloom and disquietude in many pro- 
phecies about the future of our face to-day. 
The problems which lie before the nations seem 
to many too great for mankind to solve. Ques- 
tions of race and colour, problems of population, 
industrial difficulties and above all a feeling in 
many quarters that the Religious instinct is 
growing weaker in the elder races—all contri- 
bute to a certain depression in the minds of those 
who would try to read the “ signs of the times.” 

But as Canon Liddon once said here, “‘ History 
is our best cordial,” and if we have regard to what 
Christianity did for the world in the past, we 
shall see no reason to doubt its capacity to solve 
the problems of the future. The young man 
at the empty tomb is with us still. Only let us 
hold fast to the faith once delivered to the saints 


144 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


and we shall see the same rejuvenescence in the 
world which began nineteen hundred yeats ago 
when, standing by an empty tomb, a man with 
a heart eternally young, said to a terrified world, 
“Be not afraid.” 


II. Once more we learn from this young man 
seated at the empty tomb a lesson in the health 
and virility of the Christian Gospel. 

A young man is the type of strength and 
manliness, and when the first preacher of the 
Resurtection is depicted in such a form, it is 
sutely meant to teach us that Christianity is 
emphatically a religion for the strong. 

There is a tendency in some quarters to make 
religion only a resource for the weak and the 
broken-hearted. I remember once at a Con- 
ference of Ministers held in Glasgow, to discuss 
the question of the preaching for the age, Dr. 
Parker closed the Conference by saying in his 
own dramatic way, “‘ What is the preaching for 
the age? Iteply, The preaching to broken 
hearts.” 

Of course there was truth in the reminder, but 


AT THE EMPTY TOMB 145 


sutely it was not the whole truth. We want a 
Gospel for the whole-hearted and the strong 
and the happy, as well as a Gospel for the sad 
and the heavy-laden. James Russell Lowell, 


singing of the Religion of the future, says it will 
be more than 


“.. » an ambulance 


To fetch life’s wounded and malingerers in, 
Scorned by the strong.” 

There is perhaps a truth in what even Nietzshe 
says when, in his burning accusation against 
Christianity, he charges it, among other things, 
of worshipping weakness where it should wor- 
ship strength. 

me recent writerin: a littlev book! on) Christ, 
called The Man Whom Nobody Knows, complains 
that the Jesus he was introduced to in the Sabbath 
School was a weak, effeminate, sorrowful Being, 
whom no boy could be attracted to. It was 
only when he studied the Gospels for himself 
that he saw that the Church’s conception of 
Christ was all wrong. Christ was a strong, 
bright, joyous figure in the Gospels, the best 


diner out in Capernaum, the friend of publicans 
10 


146 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


and sinners and the lover of little children. He 
was absolutely brave and fearless; adored by 
women and loved by all young men. The true 
Christ, the Christ of the Gospels, was a man 
whom nobody knew. 

There is truth in this, though it is exaggerated 
by the author. As a matter of fact, there have 
been multitudes in every age who, like St. Francis, 
have been “‘ merry men of the Lord,” and have 
found in Him no “killjoy” but One Who 
has come to give them life and that more 
abundantly. 

This is the Christ who is foreshadowed by the 
Young Manat theempty tomb. “Ihave written 
unto you young men,” he says, “ because ye ate 
strong and ye have overcome the wicked one.” 
Don’t be afraid to give yourselves to Christ 
under the false idea that He wants you to narrow 
your life or deprive it of any pleasure that is 
healthful and innocent. 

Such a presentation of Christ is false to Him 
who said, ‘‘ Can the children of the Bridechamber 
fast so long as the Bridegroom is with them?” 
Christ is the Bridegroom of the soul that loves 


AT THE EMPTY TOMB 147 


Him, and they that are united by faith to Him, 
ate invited to a wedding feast of unfading glad- 
ness, so that even at the close of life they can 
say, “‘ Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” 


III. Last of all, this young man at the empty 
tomb emphasizes the eed of moral purity as the 
condition for recewing the full gladness of the Easter 
Message. 

For he is further described, you will notice, 
as seated “‘on the right side of the tomb and 
clothed in a long white garment.”” Why white ? 
Because, I answer, white is the emblem of 


ce¢ 


purity. ‘‘ Wash me,” says the Psalmist, “and 
I shall be clean: purge me, and I shall be whiter 
than snow.” So the investiture of the first 
Herald of the Resurrection is one of snow-white 
purity, in order to teach the truth, that before 
we can enter into the message of the Resurrection 
Gospel, we must be cleansed in heart and pure 
in thought. 

Thete is nothing that destroys faith like an 
unclean life. It is only the pure in heart that 
can fully see God. If we are cherishing unclean 


148 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


thoughts in our secret soul, we can never get 
to the right side of the empty tomb. So long 
as we live a life of compromise, so long as we 
feed with the swine, we shall never see beyond 
the walls of our swine trough. It is only when 
we come back from the far country that we can 
see the Father’s face and hear the Fathet’s voice 
and enter into the joy of our Lord. If we would 
sit with the young man on the right side of the 
empty tomb, we must be clothed in the long 
white garment of repentance and cleansing in 
the blood of Christ. 

Perhaps I address some whose faith in the 
Resurrection message is dim and feeble. The 
message of this young man has no meaning for 
you. It is only an idle tale, a cunningly devised 
fable. Why is it? I would not say that in some 
cases it may be due to intellectual difficulties. 
But in others, is it not due to this, that your eyes 
ate dim because of the life you are living? Waith- 
out being utterly bad you are not living the 
life of moral self-discipline that is necessary to 
the vision of the living Christ. A young man 
once came to me and said he could not believe 


AT THE EMPTY TOMB 149 


in miracles and therefore could not join the 
Chutch. I pointed out to him that Christ’s 
wotd was “ Follow me, if any man will do my 
will he shall know of the teaching whether it 
be of God.” 

Two years after he came back and confessed 
that the real reason why he could not believe 
in a miraculous Christ was because he was living 
a double life. There was a secret unconquered 
sin inhissoul. But one day he was praying that 
God, if He existed, would give Him the power 
to overcome this sin and then he would believe. 
In a moment, he said, the light of Christ seemed 
to shine into his soul with a sense of overpowet- 
ing reality, and a voice seemed to say, “ Believe 
that I am and thou shalt know that Iam.” In 
that faith he went forward with a new and over- 
coming might. His old sin fell conquered 
before him, and since that day he had rejoiced 
in a moral freedom such as he had not known 
for years. Clothed now in the white garment 
he could look joyfully into the tomb and say, 
‘Christ is living; I know it because He lives 
in me.” 


1530 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


May such a faith be yours. ‘‘’To him that 
ovetcometh will I give a white stone, and in the 
stone a new name written which no man knoweth 
saving he that receiveth it.” 


XI 


THE FORBIDDEN TOUCH 
(For Ascensiontide) 


“Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended.” —ST. JOHN xx. 17. 


** ‘TELL me whete thou hast laid him, and I will 
take him away.” This was the sad cry of Mary 
when first she dimly saw through her tears Him 
Whom “she supposed to be the gardener.” 
The empty tomb had conveyed to her mind 
none of the faith which it had given to Peter 
and John who had entered its precincts and seen 
the well-ordered garments. She only saw in it 
another cruelty of the enemies of her Lord. 
Not content with taking His life, they now wished 
to desecrate His poor body. 

But “the Gardener” speaks again, and now 
she realizes Who it is. Gardener indeed! Yes, 
Gardener of souls in that garden of the Lord 


whose richest tree is the Cross and whose 
151 


152. DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


sweetest flowets are faith and love. “ Jesus 
saith unto her, Mary!’ She saith unto Him, 
“ Rabboni ! ” and in her rapture she flings herself 
at His feet, intending doubtless to bathe them 
with teats of joy as once she had washed them 
with tears of penitence. 

But this time the offering of love is not ac- 
cepted. Jesus saith unto her, “ Touch me not, 
for 1 am not-yet ascended unto my Father ; but 
go unto my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend 
unto my Father and your Father, unto my God 
and your God.” 


3 


Let us notice the word “for” in this pro- 
hibition. It is the key-word in the text. It 
means that while there is a touch which is 
forbidden there is also a touch that is permitted, 
that while she is no longer permitted to touch 
Jesus in the old familiar way, there is a touch 
which is still more blessed, that will be open to 
her and to all true disciples after her Lord’s ascen- 
sion—the touch of faith, the touch of spirit 
with spirit. “Touch me not, for I am not yet 
ascended,” but after My ascension you may 


touch Me, nay, hold Me fast with a grasp which 


THE FORBIDDEN TOUCH 153 


may never be relaxed, “for lo, I am with you ” 
then ‘‘all the days.” 

Here then are the two thoughts our text sug- 
gests, thoughts which are not unsuitable to this 
Ascension Sabbath; the touch which is for- 
bidden and the touch which is permitted, the 
earthly and the spiritual touch of Christ. 


I. Let us first consider why Mary was forbidden 
to touch her Master with a human touch, 

Some have suggested it was because she lacked 
sufficient reverence. That is the explanation of 
St. Chrysostom for this apparent coldness on | 
the part of Christ. But this is not satisfactory. 
Jesus did not forbid Thomas to touch Him 
before His ascension. “ Reach hither thy hand,” 
Petsaidy and thrust it into) my side’; and 
sutely Maty was as reverent as a doubting disciple. 

Others have suggested the need for haste. 
‘This was no time for lingering endearments,”’ 
says St. Gregory. “The King’s business re- 
quired haste. Touch me not, but go unto my 
brethren.” But surely a touch would not have 
taken very long. 


154 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


A truer explanation is suggested by St. Augus- 
tine. “It was meant,” he says, “to teach Maty 
that there was a far better way of touching Christ 
than by the hand of flesh. The true way to 
lay hold of the Saviour was with the spiritual 
etasp of faith.” 

Hitherto, the Magdalene had known Christ 
only “ after the flesh” as a human friend who 
had made sunshine in her life, and perhaps with 
her worship of the Saviour there had mingled 
a cettain love for the man. Nor had Christ 
refused this affection, knowing that in due time 
He would educate it into something nobler. 
That time has now come. Christ can no longer 
be an object of earthly affection. Soon His 
visible Presence will be hid from their gaze by 
the Ascension cloud. He can be no longer an 
object of human sight but only of divine faith. 
“JT ascend unto my Father.” But there is 
another Christ, the Christ of the Spirit, not of 
the Flesh. He will never leave His own. 
“Learn then,” says Christ to Mary, “to touch 
Me, no longer with the human touch ; but pre- 
pate for the time when you can hold Me with 


THE FORBIDDEN TOUCH © 155 


the hand of faith, nay, become one with Me in 
a spiritual union.” 

Such is the lesson Christ would teach Mary 
now; and has it no application for us? I 
venture to think it has. We have no temptation 
to know Christ “ after the flesh ” such as Mary 
had; but there are certain attitudes to Christ 
into which faith is apt to fall in every age, which 
are not dissimilar to the materialism of Mary. 

There is, for example, au aesthetic or artistic 
attitude to faith which, with all its beauty and, 
within limits, its truth, is apt to degenerate into 
a mere “ knowing Christ after the flesh.” Iam 
not of those who think it a sin to allow any pic- 
torial representation of Christ in the Church, 
I think that Art may have a high sacred function 
in interpreting Christ to men. Nevertheless 
there is a distinct danger in its use in worship. 
We may make Art too prominent. We may 
make it the mistress of religion instead of being 
its handmaid. Certainly the crude realism of 
many pictures of the sufferings of Christ and 
the extent to which they are spread all over the 
walls of Roman Catholic Churches, especially 


1456 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


on the Continent, seems to me to be detrimental 
to a spiritual worship. It tends to degrade 
the faith in a glorified Saviour into a mete senti- 
mental pity for a dying man. It is an appeal 
to the feelings rather than to the conscience and 
the intellect. That is partly the reason why 
the churches in Continental cities are so largely 
deserted by men and the worship is left only 
to women and children. 

I remember once visiting a large pilgrimage 
church on the Rhine. Its entire interior was 
covered with grottos representing scenes in the 
life of Jesus. At the western window was a 
Birth Scene; a stable with life-sized cattle 
standing by and waxen figures of the Mother 
and Child. Then came the Baptism and some 
of the leading incidents in the life of Christ, 
such as “‘ Christ blessing the Children,” and the 
“Raising of Lazarus ”’ from the dead; until at 
the great altar the Crucifixion was reached. 
It was, in its crude way, an impressive spectacle, 
with all the leading actors in the drama tfepre- 
sented. Above, rearing itself high into the roof, 
was a tough wooden Cross some twenty feet 


THE FORBIDDEN TOUCH 157 


in height. On its beams was impaled the 
Sacred Victim. Splashed all over with blood, 
the body hung in an attitude of agony, and with 
the two thieves contorted into even mote terrify- 
ing shapes, presented a horrifying sight. At 
the right side of it was the grave of Jesus. Its 
eravestone was a huge slab of crystal through 
which you could see lying on a bier the almost 
naked body of our Lord, a pallid form. The 
whole effect was depressing in the highest degree. 
But I said to myself, “The Resurrection will 
telieve its gloom ; and yet I wonder how plastic 
att will describe that scene.” For a moment 
I thought the question had been beautifully 
answered ; for on the other side of the altar I 
saw another crystal grave, but this time empty. 
It was, as it seemed to me, a fine symbol of the 
Resurrection, but on looking closer I saw I 
was wtong. Above the grave there was a wax 
fisure of a woman rising up to heaven. It was 
a representation of “‘ the assumption of Mary ”’! 
So far as I could see there was no Resurrection 
scene at all. The builders seemed to have 
finished their tableaux of the life of Jesus, without 


158 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


that which should have been the crown of all. 

As I wandered round I saw a lady kneeling 
before the high altar, weeping bitterly. I could 
not help thinking that if she had more truly 
grasped the message of the New Testament, 
her sotrow might have been turned into joy. 
“Weep not,” it might have said. “Ye seek Jesus, 
Who was crucified. He is not here, He is risen, 
Why seek ye the living among the dead?” 
Perhaps I was wrong. There is no doubt a_ 
sorrow for the Crucified which is proper and 
indeed at times inevitable; but the highest 
attitude to the Cross should be one of gratitude 
and praise. ‘‘ God forbid that I should glory 
save in the Cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.” To 
mourn over the sufferings of Christ as we would 
over a human sufferer is not the prevalent note of 
the New Testament. “If I have known Christ 
after the flesh,” says St. Paul, “‘ how know I him 


2 


no morte.” ‘There is a child’s hymn which says : 


“T think when I read that sweet story of old, 
When Jesus was here among men, 
How He called little children as lambs to the fold, 
I should like to have been with them then ! 


thy FORBIDDEN TOUCH 159 


I wish that His hands had been placed on my head, 
That His arms had been thrown around me, 
And that I might have seen His kind look when He 
said, 
“Let the little ones come unto Me. 


> 99 


It is no doubt a pretty child’s hymn; but it 
is childish after all. We have a better way of 
knowing Christ than they, who knew Him only 
in the flesh. ‘“‘ Behold, I stand at the door and 
knock ; if any man hear my voice, open the door 
and I will come in to him and sup with him 
and he with me.” 

The other touch of the human Christ which 
is discouraged by Christ in these words is she 
touch of Doubt, the touch of materialistic Rationalism, 
That is tepresented by the touch of Thomas: 
“Except I put my fingers into the print of the 
nails . . . I will not believe.” Christ humoured 
it mote than Mary’s touch, for He had sympathy 
with the doubter’s distress ; but, as He did so, 
He pointed out its inevitably temporary character. 
** Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast 
believed. Blessed are they that have not seen 
and yet have believed.” 


160 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Thete ate men to-day who will not believe 
in ptayer, unless you can measure its results by 
‘a table of statistics. “Give me a hospital 
watd,” said Huxley, “in which they pray for 
the patients and another in which they do not 
pray; and if the results in the first ate better 
than those in the second, I will begin to think 
about the value of prayer.” To such a hard 
materialism Christ refuses to make any teply. 
He comes to the soul that seeks Him through 
other avenues than those of formal logic. He 
comes to the faith that believes though it has 
not seen; to the heart that cries out for the 
living God, saying, “Though He slay me, yet 
will I trust in Him.” On such Christ pronounces 
His final benediction: ‘‘ Blessed ate they that 
have not seen and yet have believed.” 


Il. But though the materialistic touch of 
Christ be forbidden there is another touch which is 
open to all true believers ; it is the touch of faith. 

“ Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended.” 
Some one has said, ‘“‘ You can take out the nega- 
tives from these words and understand theit 


THE FORBIDDEN TOUCH 161 


meaning just as well.” “Touch me, for I am 
ascended.” 

What do we mean by the Ascension? Is it 
merely a tising of Jesus into the skies? That 
is but the picture of the Spiritual truth it is meant 
to teach. The true meaning of the Ascension 
is what Paul understands by it, ““ He hath ascended 

. . that he might fill all things.” The Ascen- 
sion of Christ is the resumption of His Spiritual 
Glory. So long as He had not ascended, He was 
still a Human Christ. Though His body had 
miraculous powers about it, it was essentially a 
human body—a body you could touch and handle. 
“ Handle me and see, for a Spirit hath not flesh 
and bones as yesee mehave.” And this human- 
ity limited its access to all but a chosen few. 
A human body cannot be omnipresent. 

Now Christ’s Ascension was the putting on 
of His Omnipresence, the fulfilment of His 
promise, “Lo, I am with you all the days.” 
This marks Him out as different from the 
immortality of the world’s great leaders. Dante 
died and tose again. Shakespeare died and 


tose again, Burns died and rose again. These 
3 


162 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


men tose in the sense that they came to their 
own after death. They live in history. “ They 
tule the generations from their sceptred urns.” 

They have a Resurrection but not an Ascension. 
You cannot say of them as you can of Christ, 
“Lo, He is with me all the days.” You cannot 
speak to them or get an answer from them. 
You cannot feel their arms bearing you up 
when you “fall upon the thorns of life and 
bleed.” You cannot lean on them in the hour | 
of death’s awful dissolution. 

But this you can do with Christ. Just because 
He is your Ascended Lord, you can touch Him 
with that lifegiving touch, with which the woman 
who had the issue of blood touched the hem of 
His garment long ago and was made whole ; 
touch Him in every state of life in which you 
may be; touch Him in the city and the field; 
touch Him in your going out in the morning 
and touch Him when you come in at night; 
touch Him in the roar of the busy street and the 
clanging factory, and touch Him in the quiet 
of the closet or the solitude of the mountain-top. 
Yes; there is no place where you cannot touch 


THE FORBIDDEN TOUCH 163 


Christ and whenever you really do touch Him, 
the miracle of grace is still repeated, “ As many 
as touched Him were made perfectly whole.” 

One way in which you may get into closest 
touch with Christ, I may specially mention, as 
it is referred to in our text. ‘* Touch me not,” 
said Christ to Mary, “but go to my brethren 
and tell them.” It is in telling other men about 
Christ that I am often most touched myself. 
You remember the old legend of St. Christopher ; 
how the strong man touched Christ by carrying 
the little child across the raging river. So we, 
100, touch Christ when we taise the fallen; 
support the weak, bring salvation to the 
lost. 

Longfellow has a fine reference to the legend. 
He was standing one evening on the Massa- 
chusetts beach. It was a stormy night, and as 
he looked out across the foam-crested waves, 
he saw the lighthouse rising from the reef far 
off in the sea, casting forth its beams on every 
side, to warn the ships as they passed by. To 
the poet it seemed a modern setting of the old 
story of the Christian Giant 


164 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


“Tike the great giant Christopher it stands, 
Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave, 
Wading far out among the rocks and sands, 

The night-o’er-taken mariner to save.” 


There are human lighthouses like that; and 
these are the men that most often “ Zouch Christ. 


XII 
"VHEV SORE TAOrt POW LR 
(For Whitsunday) 


“ Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power 
from on high.”—ST. LUKE xxiv. 49. 
WHEN Jesus spoke these words He was taking 
farewell of His human life on the earth. He 
who had been with the disciples for three happy 
yeats of human fellowship was now to leave 
them alone, to send them forth into a hostile 
world without His guiding presence to comfort 
and sustain. Before them loomed the mighty 
forces of Judaism, Helenism, Rome. Entrenched 
against them is all the might of ancient faiths, 
of intellectual culture, of military power. On 
their side, there is nothing but the enthusiasm 
of a few fishermen and the devotion of loving 
women. How can they hope to win in a battle 


in which the odds are so unequal ? No wonder 
165 


f60) DAYS) OF tHE 75 ONT © Having 


then He speaks of power. Power is what they 
need. Without power His life and teaching 
will be lost; perished in an ocean of obscurity, 
like so many brave and generous thoughts before. 

But power there is—all power in heaven and 
on eatth, though now His people seem so few. 
That power shall yet be theirs if only they wait 
for it. “‘ Ye shall receive power, not many days 
hence, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon 
you.” .. . “Tatty in Jerusalem untilpyemian 
endued with power from on high.” 

That was the Fathet’s promise, and we know 
how gloriously it was fulfilled. When Pentecost 
came with its “mighty rushing wind,” the 
cowatds became Titans. A new equipment of 
strength was so visible in every attitude of their 
tone and message that even their enemies were 
amazed and “‘ took knowledge of them that they 
had been with Jesus.” “ But,” as one has said, 
“it was more than that. It was not merely 
that they had been with Jesus, but that Jesus 
was still with them.” His Resurrection power 
had endued them with such strength that before 
them ancient empites crumbled into dust. 


THE SECRET OF POWER 167 


Brethren, we too need power. We have not 
the same battle to fight as Peter and the Apostles 
had. But we have our own, and it is often hard 
enough. We need power to conquer self, to 
meet the crushing weight of an anti-spiritual 
world, to assert the Church’s right to make its 
testimony known in the perplexing problems and. 
situations of to-day, power to be brave and true, 
power to confess Christ when we are tempted 
to be ashamed of Him, power to face calamity, 
bereavement and death like brave men. Yes, 
we all need power. There is no gift more useful 
ot necessary than that which gathers round this 
great Pentecostal Sabbath: “ Tarry until ye 
be endued with power from on high.” 

Hete, then, are the two thoughts which lie on 
the sutface of this text and claim our consider- 
ation. First, what is this “ power from on high’’? 
and, second, how shall one get this power ? 
Outside an engineering shop I used to read the 
words, whenever I went by rail to Aberdeen : 
“Machinery for the transmission of power.” 
What is Heaven’s machinery for the transmission 
of power P 


168 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


I. What is the “ Power from on High” ? 

It is a difficult question to answer. It is 
easier to say what it is not, than to tell what 
itis. It is not mete intellectual power. Not that 
we depreciate ¢hat. There ate people who do 
so under the pretext of honouring the Holy 
Spitit. You will usually find that they ate 
men who do not possess what they depreciate. 
They are sometimes lazy preachers, who won’t 
wotk at their sermons and try to substitute a 
cheap dependance on the Holy Spirit for honest 
labour. God is not deceived by that and in 
the end few men will be. 

And yet the power from on high is more 
than intellect. There have been men who 
possessed great intellectual power and great 
oratotical charm and yet they have been destitute 
of spiritual power. Their lives were often 
unclean, or their ministries were ineffective. 

In the life of D. L. Moody, it is told that when 
he first preached there were no results. He put 
strength and brains into his sermons, but he 
pteached for effect and so there was no effect. 
A woman one day said to him, “ Mr. Moody, 


THE SECRET OF POWER 169 


you don’t seem to have power in your preaching.” 
The remark threw him back on God. He 
thought over it and finally prayed over it until 
one day, which he always called his Pentecost, 
a new spirit seemed to pass over him. He had 
a new sense of being an instrument in Christ’s 
hands, to use only for His glory. Thence- 
forwatd he was transformed. He became the 
great and mighty power for God that he after- 
watds was in the new world and the old. “It 
was the same sermons,” he says, “ that largely 
I preached as before; but now they were all 
different in tone and purpose and result. They 
had a new aim, a new outlook, a new love.” 
In a wotd he had “ power from on high.” 
And perhaps that is the nearest description 
we can get of this power. It is a new aim and 
that aim is the complete glorifying of Christ in all 
we do instead of the old glorifying of self. You 
remember how Christ Himself described it: 
“He shall glorify we; for he shall take of mine 
and show it unto you.” “ He shall glorify me” 
—yes, worldly power is always power sought 
for its own sake, even when it masquerades 


r7o DAYS OF THE SON’ OF WEAN 


under the name of Christ; as Simon Magus 
showed when he offered money for it; thinking 
it would greatly enhance his own glory. But 
the man who would have the power from on 
high must have another Spirit. He must not 
think of self at all, and it is in the measure that 
self and its glory pass out of sight that he becomes 
filled with the Spirit. He must be able to say 
with John the Baptist, ““ He must increase but 
1 must decrease,” or with St. Paul) ““Ilive; yes 
not I, but Christ liveth in me.” 


II. And this brings us to the second thought 
suggested by our text, What is the secret of this 
power? What is the machinery for the trans- 
mission of “the power from on high ” ? 

Now that secret according to our text appears 
a vety simple one. It is just to wait till you 
getit. “* Tarry ye until ye be endued with power 
from on high.” 

Tarry | that word of course means more than 
simple inactive quiescence. It is the tarrying 
of prayer. It is the tarrying of earnest entreaty, 
entreaty such as Jacob offered up at Peniel when 


HibropCn + Oly POWER: I7I 


he cried, “I will not let thee go, except thou 
bless me.” 

It was said of David Dickson of Irvine, a 
famous Scottish minister, that one Sabbath after- 
noon before service his beadle heard him in his 
vestty, saying in passionate expostulation, “I 
cannot go alone. Unless you go with me I 
cannot go.” Wondering who could be in the 
vestry at a time when the minister was always 
alone, preparing for his service, he waited for 
a while, but there was still no answer from his 
unseen interlocutor, and at last the beadle knocked 
to say that the hour for the service was due. 
But there was no answer, and he entered to 
find the minister on his knees in prayer; the 
sweat rolling over his brow as he repeated the 
passionate entreaty, “Come with me! Come 
with me! For I cannot go alone!” It is out 
of such prayers that the power from on high 
is born. 

It was so that the first gift of the Spirit’s power 
was vouchsafed to the Early Church. ‘These 
wotds were spoken on Ascension Day. Pente- 
cost Sabbath, as you know, did not come until 


172 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


ten days after it. So there was an interlude 
between the promise and its fulfilment. And 
how was it filled? It was filled in prayer. 
“These all with one accord continued stead- 
fastly in prayer, with the women and Mary the 
Mother of Jesus.” So they “tarried ” in a ten 
days’ ptayer meeting, till on that glorious Sunday 
morning, the birthday of the Church, came the 
sound of the mighty wind, the tongues of fire 
and the gift of utterance and then the marching 
forwatd which has never ceased and never will 
cease, “ till the kingdoms of the world have become 
the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” 

So, brethren, if we too would have this gift 
of heavenly power, we must wait for it, wait 
for it in “‘the secret place of the Most High,” and 
wait for it still more in the common worship 
of the Sanctuary. There is no fact of the spiritual 
_ life we are so apt to forget as the power of prayer. 
And there is no prayer we are mote apt to forget 
than the prayer for the Holy Spirit. “ Before 
out Lord shuts up His sermon on prayer He 
touches in one word,” says Dr. Whyte, “the 
top and perfection of all prayer, that is for the 


THE SECRET OF POWER bi 


Holy Spirit. It is no longer for bread, or a 
fish, or an ege. It is no longer for long life or 
tiches. It is for the Holy Spirit and the Holy - 
‘Spirit alone. We have all wrestled at midnight, 
when we saw Esau coming to meet us with 
atmed men. We have all made our couch to 
swim with tears when our sin found us out. 
We have all fallen on our face when death with 
his torches was seen crossing our Kedron. 
But have we ever prayed for the Holy Spirit ? 
If your heart is carried on to pray for the Holy 
Spirit alone, you may have to continue all night 
in prayer until the morning. But then,—when 
the day breaks P ‘What are these which are 
atrayed in white robes and whence came they ?’ 
They are these who prayed for the Holy Spirit.” 

But our text suggests that there is another 
condition for this reception of the power from 
on high than that of prayer, mighty and effectual 
though it be; this namely that there should be 
no obstacle of sin or self in our life to bar Ets coming 
into our hearts. ‘This is brought out by the word 
“endue”’ in our text. The word in the original 
means literally “to be clothed upon.” So that 


174 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


our text might be put thus: “ Tarry ye until 
ye be clothed with power from on high.” 
Now before a man can put ona new garment, 
he must put off the old one and so we ate con- 
ducted to another and deeply suggestive thought 
that ere anyone can be clothed with the power 
of God’s Spirit, he must be unclothed of the 
old garment of self and sin. ‘‘ The Holy Dove,” 
as one has said, ‘‘ cannot descend on an unclean 
place.” God’s Spirit cannot dwell in a heart 
that cherishes sin in its secret recesses. We 
cannot of course be perfect. ‘That is impossible, 
and no one feels it more than the Spirit-filled 
man. But we can have what the Bible calls 


29 


““a perfect heart,” that is to say, a heart that 
yields itself to God with no reservation and 
says to Him, “I am thine, O Lord, save me.” 
“Thou art my king, O God; command de- 
liverances for Jacob.” 

I have said that the great distinguishing quality 
of Spiritual power is its selflessness. It is lost 
in love to Christ and seeks only His glory; and 
we see this here in the condition for receiving 
the Spirit’s power. The two are indeed one; 


THE SECRET OF POWER 175 


the abnegation of self and the entire consecration 
of life; when the first is given up the second 
follows-and the result is always a power and 
energy in character and service that no other 
talent or quality in life can equal. ‘ 
In the life of Leonardo da Vinci there is a 
beautiful story told in connection with his great 
painting, “The Last Supper.” When he had 
‘nearly finished it, he asked a friend in to see it. 
The central beauty of it all is,.as I dare say you 
know, the exquisite face of Christ, which came 
to the artist in a moment of inspiration after years 
of seeking. But this friend, though admiring 
it and many things, seemed to be specially taken 
up with a beautiful chalice, all jewelled and 
ccatved which the artist had put into the hands 
of Jesus. 

“ What an exquisite cup,” he said, “‘ you have 
put into the hand of our Saviour!” But the 
poet was displeased at the remark, and after his _ 
friend had gone out, he took up his brush and 
painted out the golden flagon replacing it by 
the simple glass tumbler which you see now in 
the picture. In a few days his friend came back 


176 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


to get another view of the wonderful picture. 
He at once noticed the change and said: “ What 
have you done with my lovely cup? You have 
spoiled the picture for me.” “Nay,” said 
Leonatdo, “I did not wish you to look at the 
cup, but at the Christ Who holds the cup.” 
That is the true attitude for receiving power 
from on high. ‘Too often we desire men to 
look at our own little cup, at our gifts and graces, 
out eloquence and intellect, instead of at our 
Lord Who holds us in His hand only as a cup 
of setvice to others. Thus unblessed we too 
often remain unblessing. The cup is empty. 
It comes with no divine vintage to those who, 
if we would only listen to the deep yearnings 


of their hearts, would say, “It is Christ alone | 


we want; no other name but His.” 
On this glad Whitsun morning, let us seek 
afresh to learn this secret. Let us “ put off the 


39 


old man” that we may put on Him “ Who 


after God is created in righteousness and true 


holiness.” Let us come with empty vessels | 
to His infilling. So shall we know that great 


enduement of power, which is promised to 


| 





THE SECRET OF POWER 177 


those who ate willing to repeat this ancient 
experience in their lives, who are resolved to 
tarry in Jerusalem until they are “‘ endued 
with power from on high.” 


XII 


WANTING IS—WHAT? 
(For Whitsunday) 


“Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed ? ”»—-AcTs xix. 2 

(R.V)). 
Two things ate obvious from this question of 
St. Paul to these men. First of all it is clear 
that they were true Christians, else Paul would 
never have spoken of them as believers. He 
would have been the first to spurn a metal that 
was not genuine. 

From the context we learn they were disciples 
of Apollos and while previous to this time that 
mighty preacher had only known “ the baptism 
of John,” it does not follow from that, that he 
was ignorant of Christ. The preaching of 
John the Baptist, according to the Fourth Gospel, 
was full of Christ and independently of that, 
it is expressly said in the previous chapter that, 

178 


WANTING IS—WHAT ? 179 


before he met with Aquila and Priscilla, to 
whom he owed so much for a deeper knowledge 
of the Gospel, he “ expounded the things con- - 
cerning Jesus Christ.” And if Apollos knew 
Christ, we may be sure his disciples did so 
also. 

But in the second place it is no less obvious 
from this question of the Apostle, that there was 
something not quite satisfactory about the faith of 
these twelve men. It was evidently different from 
the faith of the other Ephesian converts, and 
it differed evidently from theirs in a way that 
was not vety pleasing to the Apostle Paul. If 
it had not been so, there would have been no 
meaning in his question. What that difference 
was, we ate not told. Most probably it was a 
lack of results. When they spoke they were 
perhaps, like Apollos, very eloquent, very inter- 
esting, perhaps very sincere; but their speaking 
was never accompanied with those conversions 
or consolations which were the accompanying 
“demonstrations of the Spirit’ in the case of 
the other disciples. 

Or the defect may have been im their walk and 


180 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


conversation. "There may, for example, have been 
a lack of joy in it. They did not “eat their 
meat with gladness of heart, praising God and 
having favour with all the people.” Spurgeon 
once said that “ some Christians seemed to him 
to have been baptized in vinegar.” It may 
have been so with these disciples of Apollos. 
There may have been a lack of sweetness and 
blithesomeness about their conversation, which 
made them unattractive. They had none of 
the sunny winsomeness of Galilee about 
them. ‘They lived still in the wilderness of 
Jordan. 

Or, most significant of all, there may have been 
a lack of victory in their life. Some of them may 
have come to St. Paul, confessing sadly that 
their experience echoed rather the doleful wail 
of Romans vii.: ‘‘O wretched man that I am, 
who shall deliver me from this body of death ?” 
than the triumphant assurance of Romans viii. : 
“There is no condemnation to them which are 
in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but 
after the Spirit.” 

Hence it is that the Apostle puts to them the 


WANTING IS—WHAT P 181 


question of our text: “ Did ye receive the Holy 
Ghost when ye believed ?”’ Notice the change 
in the Revisets’ translation. Paul does not say 
as the Authorized Version makes him: “ Have 
ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed ? ” 
The original will not bear such an interpretation. 
No doubt it might have been so with them, as 
it was with the twelve. That blessed experience 
came to Peter and the other Apostles long 
aitere they ‘first believed.’ “It was)“ a far cty? 
from the call by the Lake of Galilee to the 
“mighty rushing wind” of the day of Pente- 
cost. | 

But since that great event, it had been the 
tule for the two events to synchronize. As soon 
as a man believed, he was encouraged to pray 
for the mysterious gift of the Holy Spirit ; hence 
it is said of Cornelius and his company that 
“while Peter yet spake the Holy Ghost fell on 
them which heard the word.” 

No sooner was a man baptized, or even before 
it, was this divine seal conferred as a mark of 
the reality of his experience. The Spirit of 
peace and power descended, giving evidence 


182 DAYS: OF THE SON OF MAN 


to all around that the work of regeneration 
had begun. 

That had been Paul’s own experience and 
this is the question he now puts to them, “‘ Had 
it been theirs P”’ “‘ Did ye receive the Holy Ghost 
when ye believed?” The word “ receive”? is 
a special word. It is always associated with 
the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. There 
is a sense in which every man is influenced by 
the divine Spirit when he “believes” in any 
Christian sense of that word. We cannot have 
faith at all without the aid and guidance of the 
Holy Spirit. But above that and beyond that 
there is here suggested a special reception of 
the Holy Spirit. This is what the disciples 
“received” at Pentecost. They had believed 
in Christ long before that event. But when the 
Spirit came down upon them with tongues of 
fire, they were transformed into different men. 
They who had been as craven as deer became 
boldas lions. They were endued with irresistible 
eloquence. ‘They went forth conquering and to 
conquer. So, suggests the Apostle, there must 
be something wanting in the experience of these 


WANTING IS—WHAT ? 183 


men, else there had been present in their testi- 
mony something which is now sadly lacking. 
“Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye be- 
lieved ?” 


Now, brethren, the question which Paul put 
to these men is pertinent in every age. Did we, 
did you and I, receive the Holy Ghost when 
we believed? If not, have we teceived Him 
since ? We may be followers of the Lord Jesus 
Christ up to our light. But is there not some- 
thing wanting, something defective in our life 
and conversation ? Have we the evidences, have 
we the marks of those who have been baptized 
with the Holy Ghost and with fire ? 

You say, “ How can I know?” My friends, 
that is a question which is not difficult to answer. 
When the Holy Spirit comes down upon a soul, 
He sets His seal upon it. And it is a seal which 
all may decipher. What ate these marks of 
those who have thus teceived the Holy Spirit ? 


I. In the first place there will be in such a 
man a warm love to Christ. 


184. DAYS OF “THE SON’ OF sMAN 


“The fruit of the Spirit is love ”—love to 
all men; but first and foremost love to Christ 
as Saviour and Friend. There will be such a 
love to the Master as Paul had when he said, 
“T count all things but loss for the excellency 
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” 
It is the function of the Spirit, as Christ Himself 
said, to reveal the Saviour to the soul. ‘“‘ He 
shall receive of mine and shall show it unto 
you.” This is one of the surest marks of a 
spiritual faith that its possessor has a new love 
to Christ, because a new perception of what 
Christ has done for him. 

Xenophon tells that when Cyrus the King of 
Persia had conquered Armenia, he offered its 
King three things as a reward for his bravery 
in battle, his own life, the independence of his 
country, or the freedom of his wife. The 
monarch replied, that he loved his own life very 
much and the freedom of his own country still 
more, but that if he were offered these in com- 
parison with the freedom and honour of his 
wife, he had but one answer: ‘“‘ Let my wife 
be saved and all else perish.” Cyrus was so 


WANTING IS—WHAT? 185 


pleased that he gave the faithful husband all 
three. As he was going home with her, and 
descanting on the Emperor’s generosity, he 
asked her what she thought of Cyrus’ appear- 
aucrewew as) nis nota mobieytace sili was 
thinking so much of my dear husband,” she 
replied, “all the time, of your great love to me 
that I could see no other face in all that court.” 
It is such a love that the Holy Spirit produces 
in the hearts of those to whom He comes. He 
produces within them a sense of adoring grati- 
tude to Him Who has done so much for them 
that He becomes to them “ the chiefest among 
ten thousand.” 

Do we know anything of this love? If not, 
let us ask the Spirit to create it within us and 
He will not deny us. He will take from our 
eyes the veil which hides from them the beauty 
of Christ and repeat within us the experience 
of the early saints. “ We all reflecting as in a 
mirror with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord 
are changed into the same image from glory 
to) slory, even as by the Lord, the Spirit’ 
(R.V.). 


186 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


II. Again, another mark of the Spirit-filled 
soul is az ardent love for God’s Word. 
Charles Wesley sings in one of his hymns : 


“The Spirit breathes upon the word 
And brings the truth to sight.” 


It needs the Holy Spirit to give a man a loving 
interest in his Bible and this He does by pro- 
ducing faith in it, that it is God’s own word. 
Beautiful as the Bible is from a literary point 
of view, it is not until we believe that it contains 
a divine message to our souls that it attains to 
its highest preciousness. It becomes then our 
Guide-book ; telling us where we are and what 
we ought to do. Often dull and dry before, 
it now becomes to us the message of God, such 
a book as it was to Sir Walter Scott when on 
his death-bed he said, “‘ There is but one book 
for me now”; such a book as Luther found 
it to be when he discovered it in the old Augus- 
tinian monastery, disused and dusty, and found 
it to be the “joy and rejoicing of his heart.” 


III. Once more another common, though at 


WANTING IS—WHAT ? 187 


times intermittent, mark of the Holy Spirit’s 
incoming into the heart, is the flooding of it with 
a joy and peace which pass all understanding. 

One of the commonest phrases of the Acts 
of the Apostles is that the disciples were filled 
“ with joy and the Holy Ghost.’ ‘The two ate put 
together as if they were constant companions. 
Whenever the one came the other usually 
followed. 

And this is a perennial experience. No doubt 
there are exceptions to it. There are moods of 
dullness and depression into which the best of 
people fall at times. There are defects of tem- 
perament which forbid us making it a tule, 
which has no exceptions. ‘The poet Cowper is 
a standing illustration of that. But on the 
whole it must be said, that if a Christian is not 
happy, there is usually something wrong with 
him. The prevailing temper of the Spirit- 
filled life is one of joy and peace. “‘ He went 
on his way rejoicing,” says the Evangelist of 
the Ethiopian Eunuch. It is the picture of 
evety Christian who “walks in the Spirit.” 
“The ransomed of the Lord shall return to 


188 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Zion ” not with a dirge but “ with songs.” The 
Holy Spirit is a Spirit of gladness and they who 
have received Him have in their hearts a well 
of watet sptinging up to everlasting joy. 


IV. Last of all, there is Power. ‘This power 
was prophesied as one of the marks of the Spirit 
by our Lord-Himself when He said, “ Ye shall 
teceive power after that the Holy Spirit is come 
upon you.” 

This power is twofold. First of all, it is a 
power over ourselves, a powet to conquet our 
evil passions and to subdue our besetting sins. 
The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of Holiness and there- 
fote so long as we remain under His influence 
we live a victorious life. I do not of course 
say that we can do so always or to such an extent 
that we become sinless men. None but a hypo- 
crite or a self-deceived fanatic would say that. 
But I do say that when a man yields himself up 
fully to the influences of God’s Spirit he gains 
a new powet to deal with old sins which before 
left him helpless and vanquished. He enables 
us to reap some of these rich fruits of the Spirit 


WANTING IS—WHAT? 189 


which the Apostle outlines in the Epistle to the 
Galatians when, after giving a dark catalogue 
of the works of the flesh, he says, “‘ But the 
fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance.” ‘The Spirit-filled life is a victorious 
life. 

And then out of that victory within comes 
the power for testimony without. It is only the 
victor that can help the vanquished. How can 
I speak with any conviction, if the truth I teach 
has not been verified in my own experience. 
“Experience teaches fools, but it graduates 
saints.” Gideon could only conquer the Midian- 
ites when he had thrown down the Altar of 
Baal in his own village. 

But when we have conquered the foes in our 
own household we go out from that experience 
with a great gladness to help others to conquer 
theirs. So was it with these disciples of Apollos. 
When they had candidly confessed their defici- 
ency and taken the way of obedience, they were 
baptized with such a new spirit of testimony 
that a fresh revival broke out in the Church of 


190 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Ephesus. Wondrous scenes took place ; among 
others a great bonfire of the idols of Ephesus, 
the “loss” of which was valued at £30,000. 
“So mightily grew the word of God and pte- 
vailed.”’ 


Such ate some of the marks of the Holy 
Spitit ? Do-we possess them? Surely there is 
not one of us who is not conscious of “‘ some- 
thing wanting” in our faith. It too often 
lacks that warm love to Christ and that joy and 
peace and power which accompany it. As 
Browning puts it: 


“Wanting is—what ? 
Summer redundant, 
Blueness abundant, 
Yet there’s a blot, 


Beaming the world, yet a blank all the same, 

Frame work which waits for the picture to frame: 
What of the leafage, what of the flower, 

Roses embowering with nought to embower ? 

Come then and complete incompletion, O Comer, 

Pant through the blueness and perfect the summer ! ” 


How shall we complete this incompletion ? 


WANTING IS—WHAT ? 19 


How shall we make up this one thing that is 
lacking ? ‘The answer is found in our chapter. 
And the first thing we note in it is @ candid 
acknowledgement of our need. ‘That is what these 
twelve men did. Instead of getting angry with 
Paul, they frankly acknowledged their want, 
saying, ““ We have not so much as heard whether 
there be any Holy Ghost.” 

It was a strange confession to make, and yet, 
I am afraid it is not far short of the truth about 
many in our churches to-day. At least, if they 
have heard of the Holy Ghost, they have only 
done so on the tarest occasions, and then only 
as a vague influence on their life, not as the 
third Person in the Trinity Who needs to be 
received into the heart just as much as the Lord 
Jesus is. ‘To put it plainly, there are many who 
know nothing of this experience and do not 
wish to do so. So long as a man is in that 
state we can do nothing for him. We can only 
pray that he may come to know how much he 
is missing in not receiving what is regarded in 
the New Testament as the crown of Christian 
experience, 


192) DAYS OR THE SON TOR Gis 


These men confessed their need and their 
desire and then there followed their submission 
to the Apostle’s teaching as to how that gift 
was to be, obtained. That teaching involved 
two things: first of all a new baptism into the 
name of Jesus, and second the laying on of the 
Apostle’s hands. The first of these may have 
meant a cettain humiliation to these men. It 
was an acknowledgment before the world that 
their Christian life had hitherto been defective. 
Nay, it may have seemed to them a certain slight 
on their great Master, John the Baptist. Never- 
theless, they submitted it because they felt it 
was the only way to Blessing. They were will- 
ing to make any sacrifice of their pride in order 
that no obstacle might be left in the Spirit’s 
way. 

So if we would receive this gift, our 
hearts must be made tready to receive it. 
We must prepare the way of the Lord, 
by clearing out of our life anything that 
prevents the entrance of Him Who can 
only come on an altar made ready for the 


fire. 


WANTING IS—WHAT ? 193 


And then there followed the laying on of 
Paul’s hands and prayer. There are times when 
the irnposition of hands is still retained in the 
Church as a channel of blessing, notably at the 
otdination of a minister. But for you and me, 
the great thing here is prayer, earnest prayer to 
Him Who has said, “If ye then being evil 
know how to give good gifts unto your chil- 
dren, how much more will not your heavenly 
‘Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask 
him.” 

Let us do it and do it now! Why should 
we go halting along in our feeble path, when 
the power of the Spirit is open to us all? I 
remember once hearing a minister tell a story 
of a gentleman who was sending off his boy to 
a boarding-school after the holidays. He went 
with him to the station, but being too busy to 
wait, gave him his ticket in the booking-hall 
and then said, “‘ Good-bye.” ‘The boy entered 
his train and went, as he usually did, third class. 
But what was his mottification to find at the 
end of the journey that his father had given him 
a first-class ticket! He had been travelling 

13 


194 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


third class when he might have enjoyed the 
comforts of the first. : 

How many of us are travelling third class to 
heaven, when we might be going first ! 


a 


XIV 


THE .BENEDICTION OF THE HOLY 
TRINITY 


(For Trinity Sunday) 


““ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the 
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.’”"—z Cor. xiii. 14. 


THERE ate no wotds in the Bible more frequently 
quoted than these. They form, as you know, 
that closing act of worship which we know as 
the Benediction. How little Paul must have 
thought that the words he was thus using at 
the close of this Epistle to the Corinthians were 
to echo on and on from age to age in the Church 
of Christ! He had been writing pretty sharply 
to these Corinthian Christians and only wished 
to make his good-bye to them one of kindness 
and Christian courtesy ; but the consciousness 
of the Church has instinctively laid hold on them 
as the most fitting way in which every Christian 


Service should cease and thus they have become 
195 


196 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


to us one of the greatest texts in Holy Scrip- 
ture. 

And when we come to consider them we see 
that they are well worthy of such an honour, 
for in the first place they sum up in brief, but 
exquisitely fitting form, the blessings of the Christian 
Gospel. 


I, There is first of all “‘ the Grace of the Lord 
Jesus Christ.” Ineed not tell you what “‘ grace ” 
means. There is no word more often on the 
lips of the Apostle. It occurs in epistle after 
epistle, often as the beginning and always as the 
end of his letters to the various Churches to 
which he had to write. And yet perhaps its 
very frequency has made its meaning dim to 
our minds; just as an old shilling may be so 
blurred with usage that what was once a clear 
image of the King or Queen upon it, is now 
hardly decipherable. Let me then remind you © 
that “ grace”? means, in the New Testament use 
of the word, a free and unmerited gift. Grace 
means a gift, but it means more than a gift. It 
means a gift bestowed on those who have no 


BENE DICTION: OF HOLY «TRINITY | 197 


claim or merit to receive it. If you were to give 
a beautiful set of jewels to your daughter on her 
mafriage that would be a gift; but if you were 
to bestow the same or its equivalent on some 
poot beggar girl on the street that would be 
an act of grace. 

Now the Gospel comes before us here as 
““ grace ” because it represents the free unmerited 
love of God to men who are without any claim 
to it—nay, in many cases totally unworthy of it. 
“ Scarcely for a righteous man will one die... 
but God commendeth His love toward us in 
that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for 
us.” It was grace, grace from beginning to 
end, this Gospel that Paul preached, and so he 
calls it here “‘ the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

The Apostle calls this Gospel an act of grace, 
and he further prays that this thought of it as 
erace might always “be with them.” It was 
always with the Apostle himself. He never 
forgot that he was a sinner saved by grace. 
Right down to the close of his ministry it went 
with him, and when he was an old man he spoke 
of himself as once a “blasphemer and a per- 


198 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


secutot?; but he adds, “ the grace of our Lord 
was exceeding abundant with faith and love,” 
for “this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all 
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the 
world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” 
It was this thought of the Gospel as an act of 
free, unmerited grace, that filled his heart with 
adoring love_and made him unwearied in his 
setvice of the Master. ) 

And it will be the same with us, if we keep 
this thought of salvation as an act of grace ever 
before us. It will make us humble and loving 
and ever atdent in the desire to serve a Saviour 
who has done so much for us. Sir Walter Scott 
tells of a man whose life had been spared by 
another when he was seeking his death and 
when his sword had been restored to the dis- 
atmed antagonist, he gave him it back, saying, 
“ Henceforth I am your servant till life is done, 
You have made me yours by this act of grace.” 

So Paul prays for these Corinthians that the 
grace of the Lord Jesus might ever be with them, 
that they might never pass out of the conscious- 
ness that they were “not their own” but 


BENEDICTION OF HOLY TRINITY 199 


“bought ” with the priceless blood of Jesus 
Christ. 


II. And then from this thought of Christ’s 
grace, Paul passes on to speak of the Love of 
God which that grace reveals. We might think 
that Paul would naturally have spoken first of 
God in this great benediction. But the reason 
of putting Him second is obviously this, that 
it is through the doorway of the grace of Christ 
that we pass into the perfect knowledge of the 
love of God. “ There is one mediator between 
God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” “‘ No 
man cometh to the Father but by me.” In 
these and many other passages we are taught 
that it is only through the knowledge of the 
erace of the Lord Jesus that we come to know 
that “God is love.” 

But when we come to know Christ, then we 
do know it. Then we understand that the fore- 
shadowings of this truth which we find in the 
greatest thinkers of the Old Testament, of a 
God Who is not only a God of righteousness 
but One of infinite mercy and love, are fully 


200 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


and glotiously confirmed in Jesus Christ. For 
this was indeed the great purpose of His love, 
to teach men that God was love, that behind 
the love of the Son there was as great and 
glorious a love of the Father, that it was “ the 
Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the 
world,” that “God was in Christ reconciling 
the world to Himself” and that no father ever 
loved a wayward child with more tender, patient, 
pleading love than the Father in Heaven Whom 
He came to reveal. 

Once again Paul prays that this love of God 
might be “with them.” ‘That is to say that 
they may never forget it. It is easy to believe 
in God at times—when the summer sun is 
streaming with brightness over our path and 
all the way is bespangled with the bright flowers 
of youth and joy; but when the winter storms 
beat on our heads and all is dark and desolate, 
then it is hard. And so Paul prays here that 
this love may ever be with them, and it will ever 
be with them when they remember “ the grace 
of the Lord Jesus Christ.”’ It is when we think 
of that greatest of all His gifts to us that we 


BENEDICTION OF HOLY TRINITY 201 


refuse to doubt Him even when the dark days 
come, saying with the Apostle, “‘ He that spared 
not His own Son... shall He not with Him 
also freely give us all things.” To have the 


? 


grace of Christ ever “with us” is to have the 


¢ 


love of God ever “ with us.” 

III. And then last of all there is the third 
petition in this wondrous prayer—‘ And the 
communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all.” 

The word “communion” means what we 
mean by “fellowship” and what the Apostle 
suggests by it here is that these Corinthian con- 
vetts might be brought into that close intimate 
fellowship with God which alone is possible for 
those who have received the gift of the Holy 
Spirit. 

It was this, Christ Himself prophesied His 
disciples would receive when He told them on 
the last night of His life, that the Father would 
give them ‘“ Another Comforter” in place of 
the One they might seem to have lost, a “ Spirit 
of truth ” who had hitherto been “‘ with them ” 
but would then be “in them.” And that Holy 


202) DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


ce¢ 


Spirit would so “ glorify ” Christ to them and 
so reveal the Father to them that instead of 
feeling “ orphaned ” after the death of their dear 
Master, their hearts would be filled with the 
joyful assurance that Christ not only lived, but 
that He lived in them and that through Him 
the Father lived in them as well. “ At that day 
ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye 
in me, and I in you.” 

This is the experience St. Paul describes here 
in one word when he says, “ The communion 
of the Holy Ghost be with you.” Could there 
be a richer, choicer blessing. But you will 
say, ““It is too high for common folks like me. 
The great Saints and Mystics may know some- 
thing about it; but it is not for me.” 

But it is for you! For notice the word he 
closes with. “‘ Be with you att ”’—all; every 
one of you, the poorest, meanest sinner in this 
audience may have it, if only you will seek it as 
the disciples sought it of old. ‘‘ The communion 
of the Holy Ghost be with you a//.” 


Such is the scope and wealth of this great 


BENEDICTION OF HOLY TRINITY 203 


Apostolic Benediction. Feebly as I have out- 
lined it to you, you cannot surely but feel that 
in itself it is well worthy of the place it has found 
in the wotship of the Sanctuary. But there is 
another teason why this text has had such an 
important place in the history of the Church 
and that reason is this, that zt enshrines as no 
other passage in the Bible does the supreme doctrine 
of the Christian Faith, the doctrine of the Holy 
Trinity. 

That doctrine does not of course depend on 
this text alone. On the contrary it is deeply 
rooted in Holy Scripture, especially in the Acts 
of the Apostles and the Gospel of John, where 
the Personality of the Holy Spirit is clearly 
taught. It is also distinctly enunciated in Christ’s 
farewell message to the Church, “‘ Go and teach 
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” 
But nowhere is its meaning and comfort more 
beautifully expressed than in these farewell 
wotds of St. Paul. } 

The doctrine of the Trinity has often been 
stated in a dogmatic and metaphysical way, 


204 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


which makes it not only repellent but even con- 
tradictory to human reason. But this is not the 
New Testament doctrine of the Trinity. It is 
not something which is apart from human reason, 
something cold and metaphysical, chopped out 
in blocks of ice by formal Logic. On the con- 
traty, as Paul describes it here, it is something 
very tender, something which grows out of 
Christian experience ; and though there is some- 
thing mysterious in it, there is nothing to my 
mind contradictory to human treason in its New 
Testament form. 

For what does it mean? Not that there are 
three Gods in One but shere are three different 
ways of approaching the one God. You have seen 
a gteat mountain, say the Rigi in Switzerland 
ot Ben Nevis in Scotland. From the point of 
view from which you look at it, it may seem 
comparatively easy of approach. Gentle pas- 
tures and beautiful forests accompany you far 
up its slope and it seems an easy climb. But 
if you try it on the other side, you will find it 
is steep and precipitous, impending over a dark 
and gloomy glen, while if you look at it from 


BENEDICTION OF HOLY TRINITY 205 


a third side it is nothing but a sheer cliff thou- 
sands of feet high. It is the same mountain 
but it has different sides of approach, the one 
entirely different from the other. 

And so it is with the mystery of God. It 
has three different ways of approach, each 
suited to the different experience to which He 
manifests Himself. To some He _ reveals 
Himself as the Father of infinite power and 
love, the creator and preserver of all. That 
is how He chiefly revealed Himself in the child- 
hood of the race. ‘The earliest name for God 
in Atyan mythology is “ Father ”—Dyaus 
Pitar, the Father of gods and men. And _ this 
thought of God as Father, as we have seen, floats 
vaguely through the best of the minds of the 
Old Testament dispensation. “ Like as a father 
pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 
that fear Him.” 

But there comes a time, both in the history 
of the race and the individual, when there is 
felt the need of something more than mete 
Fatherhood in God. We need a Saviour. Sin 
emerges in the consciousness as a tremendous 


206 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


and crushing force. We need One Who can 
save us from that and so once again God reveals 
Himself to us as a Saviour. We are led to a 
Cross and made to see that it is only there that 
the mystery of God’s love can be fully revealed. 
We see “in the midst of the throne a Lamb 
slain from the Foundation of the world.” 

And then last of all there is the crowning 
revelation of the Holy Spirit. We need a God 
Who is not far off from us like the ancient 
deities; we need One Who is with us, help- 
ing our infirmities, strengthening us in our 
conflicts, guiding us in our perplexities, and 
this we have in the Fellowship of the Holy 
Spirit. 

All these manifestations of God ate personal 
manifestations because it is only with persons 
that the human soul can hold fellowship; but 
they ate not persons in the sense that they are 
distinct individualities. They are not three 
Gods; they are only three personal manifesta- 
tions of One God. 

There is a mystery in that, you say. Yes, 
but nothing contradictory to human reason. 


BENEDICTION! OF HOLY TRINITY (207 


Take an illustration from science. LEvety sub- 
stance in Nature has three different forms of 
manifestation. It may be a solid, or a fluid, or 
a gas. ‘Thus water is most familiar to us as a 
fluid, but under intense cold it becomes a solid, 
and under great heat escapes away in steam. 
It appears in three different forms, but in each 
it is the same substance nevertheless. 

And so God has revealed Himself in three 
different relations to us, each suited to the special 
experience we may be passing through as we 
approach Him. Now, we come to Him as our 
Father, our Creator, our Preserver ; now as our 
Saviour, out Friend in need and adversity ; now 
as out Comforter, our secret of power and light 
and joy. It is the same God but manifesting 
Himself to us in different forms according to 
the special experience through which we may 
Pempassing -at the time. ‘' The etace)'of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the 
communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all,” 
for you all need Him and you need Him in all 
the ways He has revealed Himself to you in 
Christ. 


208 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


To close, what is the lesson we should learn 
from this consideration of the deep things of 
God? Is it not one of adoring gratitude on 
this day devoted to His threefold Name? What 
a God is ours Who has thus so richly revealed 
Himself to our human needs! How great His 
condescension! How wondrous His love! 
“ Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
and knowledge of God! How unsearchable 
ate His judgments and His ways past finding 
out! For of Him” as our heavenly Father, 
“and through Him” as our divine Saviour, 
~ “and to Him” as the Holy Spirit “are all 
things.” ‘To Him be glory for ever. Amen. 


XV 
THE -ROSE (IN THE HEART 
(For a Flower Service) 


**I am the Rose of Sharon.” —THE SONG OF SOLOMON ii. 1. 
“T have you in my heart.”—PHIL. 1. 7. 


My dear boys and girls, I got my subject for 
out Flower Service this year from a charming 
book about Roses, written by the late Dean 
Hole, a famous tose-lover. The very first 
sentence of the book strikes the key-note. “‘ He 
who would have beautiful roses in his garden, 
must have beautiful roses in his heart.” ‘“‘ Roses 
in the heart! ”—what a beautiful picture, and 
that is the picture I want to describe to you on 
this morning, when our church is so full of roses 
and many other flowers of summer. 

Dean Hole tells us in his book how he came 
tO wtite its opening sentence. He had gone 


to a flower-show to take part probably in the 
209 14 


210 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


opening ceremony along with a local magnate, 
whom we will call Sir Thomas. After going 
round the show, this magnate’s wife said to her 
husband, “O dear, we must really have a rosat- 
ium. We must erect a pergola in our gatden. 
These toses are simply enchanting.” So they 
got slips, some probably coming from very 
humble gardens. But they came to vety 
little. 

“TI say,” said Sit Thomas to Dean Hole a 
year after, “these roses have turned out a 
regular do. Cost a lot of money, nearly a 
tenner, and by jove, sir, our Curate came out 
at the County Flower-show and licked them all 
to fits.” 

“ Sir,” replied the Dean, “I never recom- 
mended a petson of your profound ignorance 
of roses to have anything to do with them. He 
who would have beautiful roses in his garden 
must have beautiful roses in his heart.” Which 
is true, not of roses only, but of anything that 
is of value. If you would have them in your 
hand, you must first have them in your 
heart. 


CHE SROSESINGTHEVHRARTE! 9 277 


But what does it mean to have “roses in the 
heart”? If you want an answer to that ques- 
tion, you must turn to my text. “I have you,” 
says Paul to his beloved friends at Philippi, “I 
have you in my heart.” When Queen Marty of 
England, of unhappy memory, was dying of 
erief and disappointment, she said to a friend, 
“If you open up my heart after I am dead, you 
will find the word ‘ Calais ’ written there.” She 
meant that she was so vexed by the loss of Calais, 
which had recently been captured from the 
Enelish crown by the French, that if they could 
see into her broken heart, they would find that 
name engraved there. Well, I think she was 
rather foolish to make so much over the loss of 
a town to those who were its rightful ownets ; 
but you can see what she meant by it. She 
meant that Calais was so dear to her that its 
vety name was written upon her heart; and in 
the same way Paul meant that these Philippian 
Christians were so close to him that not merely 
their names but their very selves were gtow- 
ing like sweet flowers in the garden of his 
heart. 


212, DAYS) OF THE SON TOE iyinwsy 


Now it is just so that I want you to gtow 
roses in your heart’s plot. There are other roses 
than those which grow in the gardens that some 
of you have round your houses, of which you 
see blooming so fair on our hedgerows in the 
lovely month of June. Fair as these roses are, 
there are better roses even than these, roses 
which have a sweeter fragrance and never fade. 
Such roses ate the white roses of purity, the 
ted rose of courage, and the golden rose of 
love. 

These ate the roses I wish you to gtow in 
the garden plot of your life; but in order to do 
so you must, as Dean Hole says, have them in 
your heart, that is to say you must love them 
so dearly and cherish them so carefully that they 
will flourish under your tender care; for “he 
who would grow such roses must have them 
in his heart.” | 

There is one Rose above all others I would 
have you to grow in your hearts. It is “the 
Rose of Sharon.” You know Who that is. It 
is the Lord Jesus Christ and there is no flower 
so fair in all the garden of the soul as He is. In 


THE ROSE IN’ THE SHRART.. 213 


Him all the beauty, all the courage, all the love 
of which we have been speaking are perfectly 
combined, and to have Him growing in the soul 
is to fill it with fragrance and beauty. 

But in order to have this Rose growing in | 
your souls you must have it first of all in your 
heart. It won’t do merely to admire Him in a 
languid kind of way as that lady admired the 
roses at the Show and wanted to have them in 
her garden but put no further interest into the 
matter beyond the spending of a few pounds 
which she would never miss. No, you must 
put effort and sacrifice into your rose-growing, 
just as these rose-growers do who win the great 
prizes with their lovely blooms at the show. 

In the book to which I have already referred, 
- Dean Hole tells how he once went to a Wotrk- 
men’s Flower Show at Nottingham. He did 
not expect to find anything very remarkable 
there, for roses ate expensive flowers to buy 
when they are of the highest quality and delicate 
and costly to bring to perfection. To his joy, 
however, he met with the surprise of his life. 
“T have never seen better specimens of roses,” 


214° DAYS OF THE SON OF -MAN 


he declares, “‘ than those which wete exhibited 
by these working-men.” He had the curiosity 
to visit some of the prize-winners afterwards 
and asked how they had managed to produce 
such blooms. ‘The answer was everywhere the 
same—Sacrtifice ! 

“How can you afford,” he said, “to buy 
these expensive varieties P ” 

“By keeping from the beer shop,” said 
one. 

Another walked two miles in the morning 
before work, in order to tend his precious flowers. 
A third had tumbled out of bed on a frosty 
night and stripped the very blankets from his 
bed, in order to wrap up his favourite rose- 
bush. 

Dean Hole left Nottinghamshire feeling he 
had been among the bravest knights of floral 
chivalry. He carried away a glorious bouquet 
from one of the cottages with “ the best respects 
to the Missus.” 

Now, boys and gitls, why do I tell you this ? 
Because, if they do it to obtain a corruptible 
crown, should not you and I do it to obtain 


THE ROSE IN THE HEART 21; 


one that is incorruptible. If for the sake of 
flowers that fade away in a few days, men bear 
loss and suffer hardship, should not you and I 
do it for a rose which will bloom for ever and 
sweeten all your life with an immortal fragrance. 
The Rose of Sharon costs no money to buy. 
No, but it costs something which is mote precious 
often than money. It costs your love: it costs 
your sacrifice. It may cost you tears. It may 
even cost your heart’s blood. He who would 
erow the Rose of Sharon in his soul must have 
devin his heart. If. any man follow me, ‘let 
him deny himself and take up his cross and 
follow me.” 

Christ’s Rose costs sacrifice, but is it not 
worth the cost? ‘Think of the fragrance and 
beauty it would cast on your life if you had it 
erowing there. 

There is a Persian fable of a man who picked 
up a piece of clay that had a delightful smell. 
remsaig tO mite. WW hat art) thou 2 Att thou 
Palskicem es NOs “it teplied)<; lam only'a) bit 
of worthless clay, but I have been near a beautiful 
tose and it has given me its own sweet scent.” 


216 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


To live neat to Christ, to have Him growing 
in your life, is to make it fragrant with His 
sweetness, and when others mark you, they will 
see what a glorious thing it is to have Him 
gtowing there. 

Another thing about growing the Christ-rose 
in the heart is that it will do for you what no 
other rose can do, it will protect you from those 
temptations which might otherwise turn the 
beautiful garden of your soul into a noisome 
place of noxious weeds and foul worms. When 
a man has a beautiful rose in his garden he does 
what he can to protect it ftom harm. He pulls 
out the noxious weeds that would otherwise 
infect it. He puts a fence round it from all 
who would trample it down or steal its blooms. 
That beautiful rose in the centre of the garden 
is a kind of protector of all the other flowers 
which gtow around it. 

And so if you grow the Rose of Sharon in 
your hearts it will be a kind of invisible pro- 
tectot against all the enemies of your soul. ‘“‘ On 
all the glory will be a defence,” as the prophet 
says. 


MoE ROSE IN: THE HEART": 217 


I once read of a missionary who was caught 
by some hostile savages. They hated the white 
man because of the evils he had done and decreed 
that whenever they met one of his kind he should 
die. But when the missionary was led out to 
die, he said, ““ You must not kill me, because I 
am not like these other white men who deceive 
you and enslave you and kill you. I on the 
contraty love you.” 

““ How can we tell you love us ?”’ replied the 
hatives. “You may be just the same as the 
others who pretend to love us at first and then 
turn round and enslave us.” 

“TIl prove that I love you,” said the mission- 
aty, “and Til do it by showing you that I have 
you all in my heart.” 

“Have us in your heart? How can that 
be,” said the astonished chief. 

For answer the missionary took off his coat 
and showed him a little hand mirror, which he 
had cunningly stitched into his waistcoat just 
above his heart. He had done so the previous 
nicht with a view to this emergency. 

The native looked into the missionary’s breast 


218 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


and beheld a great black face shining back at 
him there | 

“That is the window of my heart,” said the 
missionary. “See, you ate there. Come, all 
of you, and look in. See it for yourselves.” 
They wete amazed, and not only spared his life, 
but welcomed him as their friend and teacher. 

Perhaps you will say it was a bit of a ruse. 
And yet was it not the real truth after all? He 
really had these poor people “in his heart.” 
That was why he had come to preach to them. 
That was his true protection and power over 
them in the end. 


And so, my dear children, will it be with 
you. If you have Jesus Christ in your heart, 
He will be a shield of protection to you from 
these enemies which might otherwise enter 
there and destroy the fair garden of faith and 
love and hope which under His protection will 
flourish thus. 

Will you not seek to obtain His presence 
there ? Will you not buy this Rose of Sharon 
and plant it in your secret life? Will you not 


EROS IN REE Cr AR se 219 


tend it with care and water it with sacrifice, so 
that it may bloom there and fill your life with 
that fragrance and beauty which are the marks 
of those who can say to Jesus Christ, in all 
sincerity, “I have you in my heart” P 


XVI 
THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST 


(For a Harvest Festival) 


‘‘ Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that 

soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that 
soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” — 
GAL. vi. 7, 8. 
In these words Paul lays down the great truth 
that there is a germinal or seedlike principle in 
all human action. We are all “Sowers,” as 
Seton Merriman has it. The same relation that 
exists between the seed which the farmer sows 
in Spring and the harvest he reaps in Autumn, 
exists between the thoughts and deeds of your 
life to-day and the conduct and character of 
your life to-mortow. 

If you think for a moment, you will see how 
far-reaching that principle is. Take a simple 
illustration. Lay a polished stone in your hand 


and place beside it an acorn out of the forest. 
220) 


THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST 221 


The two may look very much alike. The stone 
may be polished and painted to look like an 
acorn, as I have sometimes seen it, and when 
it is so you can hardly tell the difference between 
them. 

And yet how vast the real distinction! Place 
that stone in the earth. Let the rain moisten 
it: let the sun warm it, and what happens P 
Nothing. Astoneitis. A stone it shall remain 
for evermore. 

But now take the acorn and place it there 
also. What happens to it? It at once begins 
to react on its environment. It swells and 
bursts and from its broken heart there emerges 
a spear of green which rises above the soil, 
erows in the fresh air and sunlight, and finally 
soats into a mighty monarch of the forest which 
lives generations after you are dead. 

What is the difference between the two? I 
answer in one word—“ Life.” The one is a 
dead stone: the other is a living seed. Nowso, 
says our text, is it with our actions. They are 
not dead things. ‘They are living seeds. They 
live after we ate apparently done with them. 


222 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


They germinate in the soil of time. They 

may even bear fruit in the sunlight of eternity. 
Let us look mote closely at this great thought 

of the Spiritual Harvest. Common as it is, the 

Apostle develops it in one text with great fresh- 

ness and impressive emphasis. He points out 

three great analogies between the material and 

, the spiritual harvest :— 

I. In the sémilarity between the seed we sow 
and the harvest we reap. (“ Whatsoever 
.Githatte) 

I. In the divergence in the kinds of sowing 
we may do in the fields of ‘Time. 
“He that soweth to his flesh ” and “he 
that soweth to the Spirit.” And 

Il. In the certainty and multiplicity of our coming 
harvest, “‘He that soweth to his flesh 
shall of the flesh reap corruption ; he that 
soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit 
reap life everlasting.” 


I. There is first of all the similarity between 
our sowing and our reaping. Whatsoever you sow 
that you teap. 


PAP SPiRTE UAT HARVEST?) ’.222 


You all know how wonderful a law of Nature 
is the law of Reproduction. Every seed is 
endowed with the power to reproduce itself. 
It may take a long while, it may assume many 
a strange cycle of existence in doing so, but at 
the end it comes to whete it started—itself, 
only itself in a vastly increased amount. ‘“‘ God 


99 


giveth to every seed his own body,” i.e. the 
power to reproduce itself. 

Now, so says Paul, is it with all our actions. 
They too are seeds, not only in their power to 
produce life but in their power to produce their 
own life. 

And there are two ways in which they may 
do this. First of all they may do so by the 
influence they exert on others to do the same things, 
We are naturally imitative. We do what our 
neighbours do. Of course there are certain 
periods of life of which this is more true than 
others. It is specially true, for example, of 
childhood and youth. Of the child Words- 
worth has truly said that “‘ his whole vocation ”’ 
seems to be “endless imitation.” Hence the 
need of being careful as to how we act in the 


224 DAYS: OF THE SON, OF MAN 


presence of the young. The seed of conduct you 
sow there falls on a vety receptive soil. If your 
child, for example, sees you drinking nothing but 
non-alcoholic liquor, he is likely to be a water- 
drinker himself. If he sees you making a habit 
of going to Church on the Lord’s Day, he is 
likely to be a Church-goer himself. If he sees 
you hate lying and dishonesty, he is likely to 
erow up an honourable man himself. The best 
legacy a good man leaves his children is himself. 
But what is true of children is true of all our 
actions. ‘They tend to reproduce themselves in 
others and the harvest they produce in that way 
may be a very blessed or a very bitter one. “‘ No 
man /iveth,” yes, and “‘ no man dieth to himself.” 

But there is another way in which this law 
of reproduction acts in human life. Our actions 
‘not only influence others: they have a reflex influ- 
ence on ourseWes. Farmers speak of a second 
crop. They sow tye-grass among the corn 
and when the corn is reaped, the grass springs 
up. There is a “second crop”? in all our actions. 
Their first result may be on our neighbouts : 
their second is on ourselves. ‘This is what we 


THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST 225 


mean by that great word character. Character is 
just the influence of accumulated actions on 
ourselves. It is the harvest of the feelings and 
the thoughts and the deeds of our past life. As 
George Eliot says in oft-quoted words, “‘ Sow 
a deed and you teap a habit: sow a habit and 
you teap a character: sow a character and you 
reap a destiny.” 

How careful then should we be of the deeds 
we sow in the field of our subconscious life! 
And not merely our deeds, but our shoughts 
as well. For it is the thoughts that give rise 
to the deeds. They ate the true seeds out of 
which the great and often terrible harvest of 
character springs. ‘“‘ Out of the heart proceed 
evil thoughts. These are the things which defile 
a man.” 


II. ‘This brings me to the second great thought 
Paul lays down here in his parable of the Spirit- 
ual Harvest, that of the divergence in the kinds of 
sowing we may do in the fields of Time. There 
ate two kinds of seed, “the seed of the flesh” 


and “‘ the seed of the Spirit.” “‘ He that soweth 
15 


226 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


to the flesh” and “he that soweth to the 
Spirit.” 

Of course from one point of view there are 
many different kinds of seed, which we may sow 
in out daily life, some good, some bad, some 
quite indifferent. It is not of these out text 
speaks when it says, ““ Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap.” 

As Dr. Dale says, it would not be safe to 
take our text as wniversally true of all our sowing. 
There ate many seeds of thought and deed which 
we sow in the soil of time that do not spring 
up. They rot in the ground. A man may 
sow the seed of diligent study in the days of 
youth. He may deny himself many a pleasure 
and starve himself of many a need in order to 
win success in his craft or science; and then 
just as he is about to reap the fruit of it all, he 
may die of disease or be carried off in battle or 
be drowned at sea. It is not true of everything 
that “‘ whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also 
reap.” 

But it is not of these things our text is speak- 
ing. It is speaking of the spiritual harvest. In 


CHEV SPIRITUAL HARVEST. ams 


that field of the soul there are just two kinds 
of sowing, the sowing “to the flesh,” by which 
Paul means our untegenerate human nature, and 
“the sowing to the Spirit,” by which he means 
that nature renewed and sanctified by the Spirit 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Now what our text says in regard to these 
two kinds of sowing is, that the law of the 
Spiritual Harvest is a/yays true there. You may 
see exceptions to it in the other kind of sowing. 
“The lower levels of life may be swept by 
destructive floods, smitten by fatal blights, 
unfenced and unprotected and open to the incur- 
sion of marauding beasts. What we sow there 
we may never be quite certain of reaping. But 
the eternal fields are within our reach. In these 
we are sure of golden harvests. God is the 
Only Master Who always gives His servants 
the wages they work for ” (Dale). 

How often we are apt to forget this! We 
sow ‘‘ wild oats,” as we call them, and think 
we can evade God’s law somehow and win a 
harvest of good wheat. We sow idleness and 
folly in the fields of youth and think we can reap 


228°’ DAYS ‘OF . THE ‘SON: OF MAN 


a harvest of competence and success in middle 
life. “* Be not deceived,’? my brothers. ‘“‘ God 
is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also teap.” Would the farmer 
expect a field of good wheat in which he had 
sown tates or thistle-down? As little can you 
expect to teap a harvest of good crops when 
you have been sowing only wasteful weeds. 
No: “he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh 
reap cottuption.” He only “that soweth to the 
Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” 


III. This brings me last of all to speak of 
the solemn truth which is brought out by the 
final lesson of the Spiritual Harvest that she 
reaping which we obtain from our sowing is not only 
a sure one but one that is infinitely multiplied in its 
extent. “We that soweth to the flesh shall of 
the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth 
to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life ever- 
lasting.” 

We sow in tens and we reap in hundreds ; 
we sow in bushels and we teap in acres; we 
sow in handfuls and we reap in cartloads; we 


THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST 229 


sow to the flesh and we reap—what ? Corrup- 
tion. Corruption is the same thing as flesh, but 
flesh as you see it in an awful and repulsive form. 
Flesh that is dead, flesh that is decaying in the 
erave, flesh with the worm feeding upon it. 
That is the end of the sinner’s sowing, the 
harvest of moral and physical ruin. You can 
see it in the very face and form of the open 
libertine as he reels along the streets or falls in 
the gutter a helpless wreck of Humanity; no 
less real is it in the secret and respectable sinner, 
in that inward lack of peace and satisfaction 
which are the concomitants of a misspent life, 
in that remorse and misery of soul which come 
over a man in the later stages of a profligate’s 
careet, when the world and its joys are begin- 
ning to slip from his grasp and he is left alone 
to be “ filled with the fruits of what he sowed.” . 
Byron, who knew it well, has described it in 
terrible language : 


““ My days are in, the yellow leaf, 
My soul is sere with sullen grief, 
It is as if the dead could feel 
The icy worm around them steal, 


230 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 
And shudder as the reptiles creep 


To revel o’er their rotting sleep, 

Without the power to scare away 

The cold consumers of their clay.” 
““He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh 
reap cottuption.” 

On the other hand, not less multiplied in its 
blessedness, is the harvest of “ him who sows 
to the Spirit.” He shall reap “ life everlasting.” 
Life is the greatest promise of the New Testa- 
ment. “He that believeth in Him shall not 
perish, but have everlasting life.” Does this 
mean merely an existence beyond the grave of 
unspeakable glory and endless felicity ? It cer- 
tainly does mean that. Goodness cannot die. 
Divine love is eternal and its objects must be 
the same. Wherever therefore there is a sowing 
to the Spirit in the fields of time, there is assured 
the reaping of a harvest in the fields of eternity. 


“ How bright these glorious spirits shine ! 
Whence all their white array ? 
How came they to the blissful seats, 
Of everlasting day?” 


The answer is, “ Because here they sowed to 


ME SPIRITUAL HARVEST) 237 


the Spirit. Their sowing was often hard and 
seemingly unproductive. It was often accom- 
panied by toil and tears; but they remembered 
that ‘ they who sow in tears shall reap with joy.’ 
And now they have gone to their heavenly 
Father’s great ‘ Harvest Home,’ bringing their 
sheaves with them.” 

But while the harvest of everlasting life has 
thus a special reference to immortality, we must 
not limit it to this. ‘There is Salvation here as 
well as hereafter. The life Christ bestows on 
the man who is sowing the good seed, is enjoyed 
even here in that peace “ passing all understand- 
ing ’’ which is the fruit of a good conscience 
and a heart devoted to high ideals. This is the 
“* earnest of the Spirit ” which enables its posses- 
sot even here to say at times, “‘ He that soweth 
and he that reapeth shall rejoice together.” 

If this be true, how impottant is this present 
life! It is the Spring-time of eternity. It is 
sometimes said by secularists that Christianity 
belittles the present, because it postpones all 
its benefits to another world. It is not true; 
but even were it true, it would be no argument 


232 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


fot a belittling of our present life. All the 
other way, Time is the sowing place for the 
harvest of eternity. How eatnest then should 
be our use of it, knowing that it holds within 
it issues so vast! A great artist was once asked, 
why he spent so much time over mete infinitesi- 
mal details in his pictures. ‘“‘ Because,” he 
teplied, “I paint for eternity.” If that be a fit 
motive for securing an earthly immortality, how 
much mote when we work for a crown “ incor- 
tuptive and undefiled”?! Let us put all the 
labour we can into our sowing here, assuted 
that if there may sometimes seem but little 
immediate retutn, “in due season we shall 
reap, if we faint not.” 

Above all, let us sow the seed of Christ in our 
hearts—the seed of the Kingdom, as He calls 
it in the parable of the Sower. None of us can 
estimate to what a tich harvest that seed may 
gtow if it be sown in good soil. Visiting Sun- 
derland not long ago, an alderman of that town 
told me of a man who had lived a useless and 
profligate life up till one New Year’s morning, 
when after a night of debauch he seemed to 


THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST 233 


waken with a voice ringing in his ears, saying, 
“Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.” He rose 
at once, fell on his knees and gave himself up 
to Christ. He went to the kitchen and told his 
wife what had happened, and that day being a 
Sunday went to the church, the first time for 
many yeats. He lived a Christian life ever 
after; became a local preacher and was the 
means of saving many a soul. Some years after 
he became famous in his town by saving twenty- 
six lives. A diver in the harbour by trade, he 
went down into a flooded coal-mine and brought 
out twenty-six men who would have been 
drowned had not immediate assistance been 
broughtthem. After he had dragged the twenty- 
sixth man to the surface he fell back on the 
eround exhausted, almost overcome by the 
effort. Some time after, Mr. Carnegie came to 
that town, and hearing of his story asked to see 
him. He warmly shook his hand, saying, “ You 
have done more than I have done. You have 
saved twenty-six lives.” Mr. Carnegie gave 
him a pension of £100 for life for his brave act. 
It was a worthy reward, but I daresay our 


234 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


heto, as he thought on his past life, would bless 
God as much for the souls as for the bodies he 
had saved from death, and most of all for that 
day when he had received and believed in the 
ptomise of Salvation, and the seed of eternal 
life had been sown in his heart. 

Sow that seed in your souls, my brothers, 
and it will be the best “ thanksgiving ” you can 
render to God. It will spring up in your lives 
and yield a glorious hatvest, “some thirty-, 
some sixty-, and some an hundtedfold.” 


XVII 
CHRIST’S CALL TO REST 


(Before Communion) 


“Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.” 
—ST. MARK vi. 31. 
J HAVE chosen these words as the subject of our 
meditation to-day because they bring before us 
Jesus Christ as “a Man of rest.” Of Christ as 
a wotker you have often heard. Jesus was 
indeed a toiler above all men. His life was a 
short one. ‘Three-and-thirty years covered its 
brief span. Yet He put mote into it than a 
Methuselah with his nine hundred and sixty-nine. 
He never knew what it was to be idle. As soon 
as boyhood was passed, He went to toil at the 
catpenter’s bench, and when He left that it was 
to crowd into three short years the work of a 
life that was to regenerate the world. We talk 


of working eight or nine hours a day as if it 
235 


236 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


was something wonderful. How long did Jesus 
work? The early morning found Him praying 
on the mountain-top; the noontide found Him 
tramping wearily from city to city, and the 
evening found Him still at His healing work, 
until at last the tited body would stand it no 
longer and He would throw Himself into some 
friendly boat and put out for rest to the storm- 
tossed Sea of Galilee. Yes! Jesus was a worker, 
such as the world had never seen before, such 
as the world will never see again. 

And yet, though Jesus was emphatically a 
Man of work, He was also a Man of rest. There 
_ were times when in the very midst of His activities 
He would suddenly leave it all, pass into the 
solitudes and not return until His wonted calm 
of mind was restored. 

Such a time was this in the Saviout’s life. 
He was now at the very height of His activities. 
The multitudes were thronging Him, so that 
He had'time “not ‘so much as to’ eats ae 
must have been a real joy thus to see His work 
going forward from triumph to triumph. Yet 

it was just then that He stopped it all. A short 


CHRIST’S CALL TO REST 237 


message is brought Him—John the Baptist is 
dead, slain by the cruelty of a vindictive woman. 
Jesus. recognizes in it a call to the solitudes, a 
call to rest, and meditation, and prayer. “‘ Come 
ye yourselves apart,’ He says to the disciples, 
“into a desert place and rest a while.” 

Now, brethren, this call Jesus addressed to 
His disciples is one He addresses to us to-day. 
We live, too, in an age of toil and care. The 
noise of its machinery is clanging in all our ears. 
The fever-throb of its tumult is in our very 
blood. Those of us who are in it are swept off 
their feet by a congestion of engagements and 
occupations so incessant that we have some- 
times no time almost to eat, while if we are not 
in it, if owing to some great industrial dispute 
the wheels are no longer moving and all is silent 
at the once busy hive of industry, the silence 
that is there does not mean for us rest. Rather 
the reverse. It speaks of anxious care to em- 
ployer and unemployed alike. It follows them 
into their hours of unemployment with a burden 
more heavy even than that of work. It is an age 
of work, or what is worse, of want of work. 


238 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Now what is the danger of this fever and 
fret of our modern life? The danger is that 
in the midst of our work we ate apt to forget 
the worker, that our inner life becomes flat and 
stale and unprofitable, that we develop into 
mete machines. You have perhaps seen the 
looms in some gteat cotton of jute factory. 
They grind on hour after hour, turning out the 
web that passes through them. I have some- 
times thought, as I looked at them, that we our- 
selves ate apt to become like these, factory looms, 
and nothing more | 

Nay, is there not a similar danger in our 
religious lifer What is the great want in our 
religious life to-day? Is it not the lack of 
test ? the lack of depth? the lack of repose ? 
I suppose there never was an age of such Chris- 
tian activity as ours. You have only to compare 
our ecclesiastical buildings with those of an 
earlier century to see what a difference there is. 
Those old buildings were often beautiful as 
churches, but they had only one tiny vestry 
attached to them. ‘They had no halls. Think 
what a church to-day would be without a hall. 


CHRIST’S CALL TO REST 239 


The activities of the former day were entirely 
concentrated on worship. Now we _ have 
societies of all kinds, for young and old, meetings 
all the week through, conferences and associa- 
tions of every kind. It is no doubt a vast 
improvement on the old type of Church life in 
many respects—a distinct line of advance in the 
direction of making religion appeal to the whole 
of a man’s life instead of as formerly to one 
part of it. 

And yet is there not a danger in it too? The 
danger of becoming mere spiritual machines— 
factory looms grinding out our yard of Christian 
wotk but with no hidden life, no deep experi- 
ence behind it? There is a type of religious 
character with which you are all familiar; that 
which lives on novelty and sensation, which 
flies from meeting to meeting, from conference 
to conference, much as a butterfly flies from 
flower to flower. The ordinary services of the 
Church it finds dull and lifeless. It lives on 
excitement. It has no restfulness, no medita- 
tion in its life. It has never gone with Jesus 
into the “‘ desert place to rest a while.” 


240 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Now whenever that fever and jar come over 
our spirits, whenever the strain of life is threaten- 
ing to destroy out inward peace, Christ is saying 
to us, “Come ye apart. Come away from it 
all. Come into the solitudes with Me. ‘Then 
you shall regain the self-possession you have 
lost in the tumult of life.” 

In watching any rapid river you may have 
noticed a place in the stream where the boiling 
watets circle round until they ate quiet and still. 
So is it in the stream of life. There are eddies 
” where 
Jesus bids us be refreshed ere we go forward 


in life’s current, “ quiet resting-places,’ 
to the fight again. 


J. Let us look at one. or two of these 
testing-places this morning, and let us begin 
with what is suggested by our text, the rest 
which is produced by any outward change in our 
surroundings. | 

“Come ye apart into a desert place.” It was 
away from the ordinary haunts of men that 
Jesus called His disciples, out of the current of 
life into some quiet place; where the boiling 


\ 


CHRIST’S CALL TO REST 241 


watets had hushed their strife and all was calm 
and restful, 

Such a habit we know was familiar to Jesus. 
The night with its starry solitudes, when the 
sounds of garish day wete hushed and there 
was nothing to stand between Him and God; 
the mountains with their calm peace, even the 
stormy waters of Galilee’s lake, these were the 
testing-places of Him who had nowhete’ else 
fOr wrest’ his’ head,”’ 

Fven in Jerusalem, with its crowds, He had 
found a place where He could be quiet: “ There 
was a gatden called Gethsemane, and he often 
resorted thither.” 

This, then, is one of the resting-places of the 
tired spirit, a change in the outward environment 
of our life to the solitudes. Such a change 
indeed has now almost become a necessity of 
Out existence, so great is its strain and stress. 
Summer by summer our cities empty themselves 
far and wide; some to seashore and island, 
othets to quiet country-side or mountain glen. 
It isa great rest, a welcome break in the monotony 


of life. The salt sea-breezes bring back the 
| 16 


242 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN > 


tone to the jaded nerve and the toses to the 
languid cheek. The vast solitude of our High- 
land hills, with their stillness broken only by 
the bleat of some lonely sheep, these have a 
most soothing effect on a mind and body jaded 
by a winter’s work. 

But while thus our bodies ate tefteshed, let 
us not forget that our spitits need refreshment 
too. “Come ye apart and rest a while” is what 
Christ says to out souls as well. See in the 
rest of nature a call to a deeper test than Nature 
alone can bestow. Sutely even to the most 
prosaic there is a ministry in nature, something 
that appeals to your deepest longings. That 
wild and restless sea, does it not speak to yout 
restless spitits of that troubled sea within, which 
can never be at peace till Christ says to it, “ Be 
Billie 

And these great mountains, always peaceful, 
have they no message to your souls of that 
“peace which passeth all understanding ” ? 
Yes, sutely God speaks to you in this resting- 
place, if only you have eats to hear, of that 
“rest which remaineth for the people of God.” 


CHRIST’S CALL TO REST 243 


How great the calm which would thus come 
down upon our spirits did we only listen when 
God speaks to us in these quiet resting-places ! 
Our outward life may be jarred by a thousand 
cares; but alone in the solitude of nature you 
ate at test with God. As Robertson of Brighton 
puts it : “ Yes, thank God, thereis rest! Many 
an hour of sweetest rest, even here, when it 
seems as if evening breezes from that other land 
played upon the cheek and lulled the heart. 
There are times even on the stormy sea of life 
when a gentle whisper breathes softly as of 
heaven, and sends the soul into a dream of ecstasy 
which can never again wholly die.” 


II. Once again, worship, either the worship of 
the Sanctuary or the worship of “the secret 
place’ of individual prayer, is another of life’s 
resting-places. 

It is not always possible to change our out- 
watd surroundings, but there is one resting- 
place which is always open to the troubled soul, 
the resting-place of prayer. 

Some one has said that “ prayer is the well- 


244 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


spring of character.” As the river draws its 
streams of refreshing water far off from the city 
through which it flows, in the solitude of the 
hills, so every strong character draws its supplies 
from the solitudes too, the solitudes of prayer 
and thought. 

A gteat man once said, “I am too busy to 
be in a hurry.” He meant that if he were in 
a hurry he would lose that quiet self-possession 
which is essential in doing work effectively. 
Jesus was never ina hurry. Worker as He was, ~ 
He had always twelve hours for His day of life. . 
And the sectet of it was prayer. Whenever He | 
had a great deal of work to do, He went up to 
the mountains to pray, and hence when He came: 
back to the excitement of daily life, it was with 
perfect calm. No hurry with Him. He did 
His great work as Nature does hers, quietly, 
without bustle or strain. 

We sometimes think we have no time to 
ptay ; no time to go to Church. Our life is sO” 
busy all the week that we need a holiday on 
Sunday. It is a vast mistake. Thete is no 
place where we can gain better rest both for 


CHRIST ’S* GALE TOCREST 245 


body and mind than in the “secret place of the 
Most High.” Would you restore to your mind 
that calmness and self-possession which you 
have lost in the tumult of life? Then listen 
to the call of Christ every morning, and 
specially every Sabbath morning: “Come ye 
yourselves apatt into a desert place and test 
a while.” 


III. Last of all, let me speak of one more 
resting-place which comes most suitably to our 
thoughts to-day, the resting-place of Communion 
with God at the Holy Table. 

Of all earth’s resting-places, this, to the true 
Christian, is the sweetest and the best. Speaking 
in human language, I would call it the resting- 
place of sweet companionship. ‘There are some 
people who have the very ait of rest about them. 
They dwell in the House of Quiet. It is good 
to be with them. No matter how jaded your 
spirit may be when you go to see them, their 
presence exerts a healing influence on your 
whole being. Their smile and wise words, the 
very tones of their voice soothe you. To have 


246 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


a talk with them is to bring your soul into an 
atmosphete of peace. 3 

Of all who possessed this gift, Jesus is easily 
the best. ‘“‘ Come unto me,” He said not in 
vain, “and I will give you rest.” Men of all 
kinds and classes came to Him—cultured and 
ignorant, rich and poor, sinful and innocent— 
and they never went empty away. They found 
rest to their souls. They found quiet to their 
troubled breasts. Here was One who knew 
‘them, through and through, who knew all their 
weatiness and their pain, One whose very look — 
and voice and healing touch chased away all 
their troubles as the morning sunlight chases 
away the shadows of the night. 

It is to such a fellowship that the Saviour calls 
us to-day. Weary, vexed and troubled as some 
of us may be, tired as we all are at times with 
the burden of life, this is what He says to us 
as we dtaw neat to the Lotd’s Table: “Come ye 
apart and rest awhile.” Perhaps there are some 
of us here who, like Christ and His disciples, are 
specially worried just now with toil and care. 
Things are not going so well with you in your 


CHRIST’S CALL TO REST 247 


business of your homes as you would like them 
to do. You come home often worried and find 
it difficult to sleep. Here then is an opportunity 
of finding rest. Bring these cates to God. 
“Cast thy burden on the Lord.” Tell Christ 
about them and He will help you. 1 don’t 
know how. But I am sure of this: He will 
not fail you if you come to Him, as He wants 
to meet you at this hour of Holy Communion. 
You will find it good to be here. He will not 
break His promise: ‘“‘Come unto me, all ye 
that labour and ate heavy laden, and I will 
give you test.” 


Perhaps you ate like Christ also in this, that f 


you ate sitting under the shadow of a tecent 
bereavement. It was the death of His beloved 
Forerunner that drove Him at this time into the 
solitudes. So may it be with you. Some one 
vety deat has gone out of your life. It can never 
again be the same. But it is the same God, 
the same Christ. He will “never leave you 
nor forsake you.” Come to Him to-day. Tell 
Him your own heart’s need and you will not 
come in vain. He will heal your wounded 


248 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


spirit. He will bind up your broken heart. 

Whatever be our need of condition, let us 
heat Christ’s call: “‘ Come ye apart into a desert 
place and rest a while.” Whether we are glad 
or sad, young or old, busy or at leisure, we all 
need Christ. There is not a soul here who 
would not be better for His fellowship. To have 
mote of His Spirit in our life, more of His peace 
in our hearts, this is the secret of rest to out 
souls. 

May we find it so to-day! May it be yours 
to say, “I sat down under his shadow with 
great delight and his fruit was sweet unto my 
taste.” Blessed the man who hears the call of 
Jesus to such a testing-place. Sweet are the 
solitudes where Christ is present. The desert 
is no longer desert when He is there. ‘“‘ The 
wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad 
for him, and the desert shall rejoice, and 
blossom as the tose.” 


XVIII 
THE CENOTAPH OF JESUS 


(Before Communion) 


“This do in remembrance of me.”—ST. LUKE xxii. 19. 


SOMETIMES in going through a cemetery, the 
eye is arrested by seeing among the polished 
stones a broken pillar. Among the rest it 
stands conspicuous with ragged edges. And if 
you look nearer you find it to be a symbol 
as well as a monument; commemorating 
a life that was broken in the midst of its 
promise. 

Whether such a monument is a truly Christian 
symbol may indeed be doubted. ‘There are no 
broken pillars in the garden of God. Every 
life is complete in Him. He will gather up the 
fragments and nothing shall be lost. 

But I mention it, because it is an illustration 


of what the Lord’s Supper is meant to be. It 
249 


250 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


is the monument of Jesus. On its face you can 
trace the familiar inscription : 


*“*In remembrance of me.’’ 


But this monument is a symbol as well. The 
broken bread and poured-out wine are a parable 
of that heart that was once broken, of that blood 
that was once shed for us. 

Let us bend down to tead more closely the 
insctiption on this old tombstone. Though 
nineteen hundred years old, we can tead it as 
clearly as if it were written yesterday, “‘ This do 
in remembrance of me.” 


I. What do these words tell us about the 
Lord’s Supper P They tell us first of all that ¢ 
is the memorial of Jesus. ‘They ate a testimony 
to the fact that Jesus wished to be remembered 
and that this is the way He sought to be so. 
As we sometimes take out of some drawer the 
keepsake of a dead friend, as a mother will bind 
into a locket the hair of a child loved but lost, 
so Jesus gives us here a keepsake of Himself. 
This, He says, is “‘ for remembrance.” 


THE CENOTAPH OF JESUS 251 


Why did He wish to be remembered ? No 
doubt there was a human side to His desire. 
We all like to be remembered. You recall 
Tennyson’s lines of the dying girl: 

“You'll bury me, my mother, just beneath the hawthorn 
shade, 

And you'll sometimes come and see where I am lowly 

laid. 

Pll not forget you, mother; I shall hear you when 

you pass, 

With your feet above my head in the long and silent 

grass.” 

So Jesus, “ having loved his own, which were 
in the world, loved them unto the end,” and 
beyond it. He wished to be remembered by 
Peter, and John, and Thomas. He wishes it still. 
Jesus yearns fot us to remember Him, and when 
we gather to His table to do so, He sees of ‘the 
travail of His soul, and is satisfied.”’ 

But there is another and deeper reason why 
Christ wishes us to remember Him. He wishes 
it for our sakes as well as for His. Memory is 
the gateway of love, and as there is no feeling 
so elevating to character as love to Christ, so 
He bids us from time to time keep this feast of 


252, DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


recollection, because by doing so our affection 
is kept vital and we are lifted by it from the 
enslaving lusts and corroding cares of this 
present world, into the atmosphere of what is 
high and holy and strong. 

That, then, is the first thing these words tell 
us about the Lord’s Supper. They remind us 
that it is a memorial feast. Christ had nothing 
to leave His friends. He left nothing but the 
clothes of the carpenter, and these wete appro- 
ptiated by the Roman soldiers. Nor, had He 
been as rich as Croesus, could He have left a 
tangible gift to the millions who in after years 
were to wish to remember Him. And so He 
left us this simple feast, this beautifully expressive 
tite, by means of which we can always make 
vivid His wondrous love to us and, in temembetr- 
ing it, be blessed. 


I], But in the second place these words 
teach us further, that the Lord’s Supper is not 
merely a memorial of Christ, but that # és so 
Specially of Hts death. 


“ This do,” He says, and when we ask 


LOE CEN DARHT OR JESUS) 294 


“ What ?”? we ate pointed to a symbolism, not 
of /ife, but of death. The broken bread speaks 
of a body broken. The red wine tells of a 
blood shed. 

In this respect the Lord’s Supper differs from 
most human monuments. These memorials are 
raised to honour the lives of those they com- 
memotate rather than to dwell on their deaths ; 
and on their tablets are inscribed the deeds they 
did, the battles they won, the songs they wrote, 
the characters they created ; in a word, the great 
achievements of their life. For example, if 
you go to see Burns’s monument at Ayr, you 
see the poet standing in the fullness of his 
vigorous youth, while beneath are the happiest 
creations of his fancy. 

How different with Christ’s Monument! It 
is not the events of His life which it commemot- 
ates, but the fact and manner of His death. It 
shows Him to us in the article of death. 

Why is thisP Was it that there was nothing 
else in His life worth recalling ? Such a question 
needs no answer. Christ’s life was full of the 
noblest deeds and the most beautiful words. 


254 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


His miracles drew thousands to His side. He 
“spake as never man spake.” His character 
is the most beautiful combination of tenderness 
and strength that has ever been represented in 
human history. 

Yet when Jesus bids us remember Him, He 
turns aside from all this and bids us temember 
only His death. As Professor A. B. Bruce has 
put it, “He seems to say, ‘Fix your eyes on 
Calvary and watch what happens there. That 
is the great event in My earthly history. Other 
men have monuments, because they have lived 
lives deemed memorable. I wish you to erect 
a monument to Me, because I have died. ‘The 
memory of other men is cherished by their birth- 
days, but in My case better is the day of My 
death than the day of My bitth. My birth into 
the world was momentous, but still more is 
My death. Of My birth no festive commemor- 
ation is needed; but of My death keep alive 
the memory till I come again. Remembering 
it, you temember all, for of all it is the secret, 
the consummation and the crown.’”’ 

Why is this, brethren? Is it because, noble 


THE CENOTAPH OF JESUS 25; 


as the things in Jesus’ life are, His death is 
incompatably the noblest of all? For us, there 
‘is no doubt truth in such an explanation. As 
in the life of Socrates there is nothing so grand 
as the hour in which he drank the hemlock cup 
and passed intrepidly forward into the great 
unknown ; as in the life of Nelson there is nothing 
so splendid as the day when, having flashed out 
the signal, ““ England expects every man to do 
his duty,” he himself gave a signal illustration 
of that by laying down his own life in the hour 
of victoty ; so in the great life of the Man Christ 
Jesus there is nothing so sublime as these last 
houts on the Cross when He breathed out His 


life in prayers of forgiveness and love. As the ~ 


sun never shines so beautifully as when it sets, 
so the Sun of Righteousness never shone out so 
erandly as when it set behind the blood-red hill 
of Calvary. | 
All that is true; but then we cannot think 
of Jesus as asking us to remember His death 
because of that. ‘To do so would be derogatory 
to His meekness. It would jar on our con- 
ceptions of the “lowly in heart” to think of 


256 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Him as asking us to remember something in 
His life because it was specially fine. It would 
be like a man building his own monument. 

No, that is not the reason why Jesus asks us 
to temember His death. He Himself has left 
us in no doubt as to what that reason was. It 
~ was because His death was a sacrificial death. 
It was His body that was to be broken for us; 
it was because His blood was to be shed for 
the remission of our sins. 

As the Paschal lamb, of which the disciples 
had just been eating, was sacrificed as a call, to 
temembrance of that night when the destroying 
angel had “ passed over ” every house in Egypt 
whose lintel and doorposts were dyed with its 
blood, so Jesus was the Paschal Lamb of God, 
whose shed blood was to deliver man from a 
deeper slavery than that of Egypt. “ Bchold 
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin 
of the world.” “He was wounded for our 
transgressions : He was bruised for our iniquity.” 
“He made Him to be sin for us who knew no 
sin.” These were the truths which this Sacra- 
ment was meant to proclaim, and it was to 


he CUNOTAPES OFF ESUS >” 254 


enshrine that faith and deepen it into adoring 
love and joyful assurance that our Saviour said, 
“This do in remembrance of me.” 

One of the truths that the Great War revealed 
to us in letters of fire was that righteousness has 
sometimes to be bought at a mighty cost, the cost of 
agony, and blood, and tears. That is what our 
soldiers did for us; they died that our countty 
might live; they died that Righteousness and 
Freedom might not die. And in a sense in- 
finitely grander, that is what Jesus did for us. 
He died that we might go free. He died that 
God’s peace might be ours. He died that we, 
being justified by faith in that atoning blood, 
might have peace with God. 

It was for this that we might comprehend 
with all Saints “the length and breadth and 
depth and height ” of the love of God when He 
*“sent the Son to be the Saviour of the World,” 
that Jesus said to His own on the night in which 
He was betrayed, “ This do in remembrance 
often.” 


IiI. Once mote, the Lord’s Supper is not 
17 


258 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


merely a memotial of Christ’s past love, zt as 
also a reminder of His present love. 

That is implied in the striking words with 
which He accompanied this act of remembrance : 
“ Take, eat, this is My body, which is broken for 
you”; “ This is My blood, which is shed for you. 
Drink ye all of it.” Romanists, as you know, 
base their doctrine of Transubstantiation on 
these wotds: ‘They assert that during the con- 
sectation by the priest, a miracle takes place ; 
the bread and the wine are corporeally changed 
into ‘‘the very body and blood of Christ”; and 
in support of their claim we hear from time to 
time of the “ dripping wafer ” in certain Italian 
towns. 

Of course all true Protestants reject this doc- 
trine as the grossest materialism. Nevertheless, 
they do not teject the truth of which it is a 
distortion; this, namely, that ¢hese words speak 
to us of a real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, 
that when Jesus says to the believing Communi- 
cant, “ This is My body,” He means something 
mote than “This bread stands for My body.” 
No! as Christ declared in the sixth chapter of 


THE CENOTAPH OF JESUS 259 


John, there is a sense in which the Lord Jesus 
does give us His flesh to eat and His blood to 
drink. He does so spiritually. He communi- 
cates Himself to the believing soul, and it is in 
testimony to this Communion, which is also a 
Communication of Christ to our souls, that Jesus 
says to us here, “ Take, eat, this is My body. 
Drink ye all of it, for this is My blood.” 

This is the third and highest truth proclaimed 
in the Lord’s Supper. It speaks to us of an 
Eternal Presence. No doubt that truth is not 
confined to the Lord’s Supper. But it is there 
that it is most specially revealed. 

As an old Scottish minister has said, “* We 
get nae ither thing in the Sacrament but the 
same thing thou hadst in the Word. What new 
thine wouldst thou have? But suppose thou 
get that same thing better, is not that better ? 
Thou gettest a better grip of Christ in the Sacra- 
ment than thou hadst in the Word. Where I 
had but a little grip of Christ before, as it were 
between my finger and thumb, now I get Him 
in my whole hand.” 

It is this that redeems this joyful service from 


260 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


being a funeral feast. It is no mere remembrance 
of One Who died. It is a holy Communion 
with One Who ever liveth and Who in it fulfils 
His promise: “If any man open the door, I will 
come in to him, and sup with him, and he with 


99 


me.” If in its outward form it is a monument 
over a gtave, it is not like other monuments, 
fot it 15 a monument over an empty grave. It isa 
Cenotaph, telling us that He Who died is dead 
no longer, that He ever lives to bless His 
people with the gift of Himself, and that to 
those who receive the bread and wine in faith, 
they ate in very truth His body and His 
blood. 

Let us seek this morning afresh to avail our- 
selves of this glorious offer and privilege. Let 
us draw near once mote to this altar of Divine 
love with full assurance of His presence there, 
so that He may refresh and strengthen all our 
hearts; saying as we do so: 


“ According to Thy gracious word, 
In meek humility, 
This will I do, my dying Lord, 
I will remember Thee. 


THE CENOTAPH OF JESUS = 261 


Gethsemane can I forget? 
Or there Thy conflict see, 
Thine agony and bloody sweat, 
And not remember Thee? 


Remember Thee, and all Thy pains, 
And all Thy love to me; 

Yea, while a breath, a pulse remains 
I will remember Thee.” 


XIX 
LOVE'S ‘TENSES 
(Before Communion) 


“ Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his 
blood ; and he made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his 
God and Father; to him be the glory.”—REv. 1. 5, 6 (R.V.). 

On the grave of Charles Kingsley and his wife 
at Evertsley there stands inscribed this beautiful 
inscription, designed by himself—“ Amavimus ; 
Amamus; Amabimus”: ‘‘ We have loved; 
we do love; we shall love.” It is his pardon- 
able boast of that love which was the star of 
his life and which his biography, written by his 
wife, shows to have been wonderfully vindicated. 

In this text we have enshrined in letters “ more 
lasting than brass ” the past, present, and future 
of the love of Christ. That is well brought out 
in the Revised Version, which changes the word 
“ loved” into “ loveth,”’ in accordance with the 


best MSS. It is not merely a past love for which 
262 


LOVE’S TENSES 263 


John is taising his doxology here. It is also 
a present love. “Unto Him that loveth us 
now.” And it has also a future beforeit. “ He 
made us to bea kingdom, to be priests unto God.” 
That is its destiny in the eternal future. 

Let us look at love’s three great tenses as they 
ate set before us hete. As we sit at the Lord’s 
Table, we remember first of all a past of Christ’s 
love ; but if our Communion is to be a teal one, 
we should also remember that it is a present love, 
and that it has also a future before it as well. 


I. Look fitst of all at the Past of Christ’s 
great love. 

It is true of every human love that is worthy 
of the name, that it can give account of itself 
by reference to its past. It can point to some 
great experience, or experiences, out of which 
it was born and by whose memories it is fed. 
Sometimes that past experience comes in a 
moment or two, as it was of Kingsley himself 
when he said of the first day in which he saw his 
future wife, “That was our marriage day.” 

But mote often love slowly matures itself in 


264," DAYS ,OF “THE SON “OF: MAN 


a seties of gentle happenings, culminating in 
some gteat crisis. It was so with John’s love 
to Christ. It took its rise in those beautiful 
experiences of which we read in the Gospels, 
which tell of how the disciples first learned to 
love Him “who fitst loved” them. But it 
culminated in the Cross when He died to save 
us from sin’s guilt and power. Hence John says 
of it here, ““He washed us or loosed us from 
our sins in His own blood.” 

“He washed us”; the Revised Version tran- 
slates it “loosed us.” The first thought is 
that sin is a stain on the conscience which 
Christ washes away. ‘The second is that sin is 
a chain upon the will which He breaks, by 
shedding His own blood for us on the Cross. 

Both of these figures are scriptural. Sin is 
a stain on the conscience, and though the super- 
fine would discard from our hymn-books one 
of the greatest Christian lyrics of one of our 
gteatest poets, I for my part rejoice to sing: 


“There is a fountain filled with blood 
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; 
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, 
Lose all their guilty stains.” 


LOVE’S TENSES 265 


But the Cross not only cleanses the soul from 
the stain of sin, it also looses it from its chain. 
It says to the demons of lust and passion, ‘“‘ Loose 
him and let him go.” At the Cross we hear 
a voice saying not only “ Thy sins are forgiven 
thee,’ but “‘ Go and sin no more.” And this is 
pethaps the more common thought in this book. 
The other thought of the cleansing of the blood 
of Christ is indeed present in it; but the more 
favoutite thought is this: “They overcame by 
the blood of the Lamb.” It was a time of 
conflict and persecution. Again and again, 
therefore, we hear John saying, “‘ To him that 
overcometh will I give the blessings of my grace.” 
And here, probably, John’s great thought is 
this: that love sets us free from the thraldom 
and tyranny of sin. “Unto him that loveth 
us, and loosed us: from our sins by his 
blood.” 

That is love’s great part and that is why Christ 
wants us always to remember it; because it 
keeps fresh and vivid that deliverance from the 
horrible pit which it gave us when first we re- 
ceived it by faith, a memory which we always 


266. DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


need to renew in our conflict with the great 
enemy. 


II. But while the love of Christ has thus a 
gteat past, zt has also a still more glorious present. 

A love that is merely a past love is a sad love. 
It is sweet to recall the past of love and look 
back on scenes and places whose memorties 
haunt us still; but if these memoties are only 
memories, if they have no present and no future, 
then love has already dug its grave; for 


“Sotrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier 
things,” 


But there is no such shadow testing on the love 
of Christ. Forty or fifty years have passed 
since first that love had shone upon the glowing 
heart of the youthful John. The head that then 
was pillowed on the breast of the Saviour and 
listened to the beatings of that heart which was 
broken for him, is now white with years of 
struggle and suffering. But time has made no 
diminution in the ardour of that first attachment, 
nor does it cast any cloud over his assurance 


LOVE’S TENSES 267 


that he is loved as much in turn. Time makes 
no change in the love of Christ. Though far 
away from these eatly days of his espousals, 
still as he stands on the shores of Patmos he can 
hear the voice of his Lord saying to him: “I 
am he that liveth, and was dead, and behold, I 
am alive for evermore.” Time writes no wrinkle 
on the brow of that love of Christ. 

And as time does not change it, so neither 
does circumstance alter it. You cannot read this 
book of Revelation without seeing how vastly 
changed is the Christ of the Apocalypse from the 
Christ of the Gospels. The Christ of the Gospels 
is a lowly Carpenter, a suffering dying man. 
The Christ of the Apocalypse is an exalted Lord. 
On His head are many crowns. His counten- 
ance is as the sun when it shineth in his 
strength. His voice as the sound of many 
waters. But yet in spite of that, to John He 
is still the same, the same yesterday and to- 
day, “Unto him that loveth us ”—still. 

Now, what John said of himself, you and I 
may also say, if we believe in Jesus as He did. 
Notice the glorious plural of our text. Unto 


268 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


Him that loveth ws—not one only, but us all. 
John associates himself with us in a great co- 
partnership of love. No lapse of time, no change 
of condition can alter the heart of Him who 
“loved us from the first of time” and “ loves 
us to the last.” 

Tennyson, in “In Memoriam,” points out 
how the friends of youth may be divided by 
the circumstances of age. He paints before us 
a man— 


““ Whose life in low estate began 
And on a simple village green; 


Who breaks his life’s invidious bar, 
And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 
And breasts the blows of circumstance, 
And grapples with his evil star ; 


And moving up from higher to higher, 
Becomes on Fortune’s crowning slope 
The pillar of a people’s hope, 

The centre of a world’s desire.” 


And then he describes this man in some quiet 
hour going back in thought to the old hill and 
stream where he played at “counsellors and 
kings,” 


LOVE’S TENSES 269 


“With one that was his earliest mate, 
Who ploughs with pain his native lea 
And reaps the labour of his hands 

Or in the furrow musing, stands ”’ 


and wonders, 


“Does my old friend remember me?” 


Does he? It must be answered not often. 
Thete are indeed exceptions. It is told to the 
credit of Sir William Robertson Nicoll that he 
kept up to the end of his life unbroken his friend- 
ship with his two earliest college friends. They 
remained all their life simple country ministers, 
while he rose to be one of London’s great men. 
Yet every year they met and renewed the bond 
of old friendship. 

But in the majority of cases, we fear, it is not 
so. Love cannot survive so great a change of 
circumstance. ‘The exaltation of the one begets 
neglect; or more often the depression of the 
other arouses suspicion of neglect, and the result 
is a withering of affection. 

It is perhaps a feeling akin to this that has 
made the devotee of the Roman Church transfer 


270 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


so much of his prayers, if not his love, from the 
Saviour to His mother. “She is a woman. 
She will hear us. Christ is too exalted to be 
approached by such as me.” 

However natural such a feeling, it is a 
gtievous wtong to Christ. Still, as of old, 
when He sighed the human sigh or wept the 
tear, does Jesus love His own. The crown of 
glory on His head, has not dimmed love’s lustre 
in His eyes or dulled the sympathy of His heart. 
The doxology of John may be sung by all the 
ages and out of every rank and condition of 
men, “‘ Unto him that loveth us.” | 

And being so, what should be our attitude 
to it? Well, of course we should rest in it and 
rejoice in it. We should join with the Apostle 
in praising a love so great and so divine, and 
trust in it as our hope and security in time and 
in eternity. 

But should we not do more than this ? Jesus 
says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” 
and if we are truly to respond to the love of 
Christ we should do so by a life of practical 
obedience to its behests. As the flower responds 


LOVE’S TENSES 2at 


to the sunshine by bursting forth into the forms 
and colours of beauty, so should we to the love 
of Christ ; by yielding to that love and allowing 
it to work out in our life the flowers of likeness 
to it and the fruit of service for it. 


Ill. It is to this John refers when speaking 
of the future of Christ’s love: “and he made 
us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God 
and Father.” 

By the Kinghood and Priesthood of believers 
John refers to the character and service to which 
the love of Christ conducts a man who yields 
himself freely and fully to it. 

Christ makes us kings unto God; this too is 
a favourite thought of the Apocalypse. Again 
and again John refers to it, speaking of their 
reign as one which is to go on for ever and ever. 
What does it mean? It means their glory, of 
coutse. But what does glory mean in the New 
Testament as applied to a Christian man. It 
evetywhere means their character. “We all, 
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 
ate changed into the same image from glory to 


272 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


glory,” i.e. from character to character, ever 
gtowing higher, and better, and stronger. 

It is told in Roman history that when Pyrrhus 
sent ambassadots to the Roman Senate, he asked 
them when they returned if the Romans had 
no king. “No,” was the teply, “they had no 
king ; but every one looked as if he were a king.” 
There was a majesty of character about them 
better than ahy crown of gold. 

It is this majesty of character that the love 
of Christ creates in a man when it is responded 
to. It gives him the regality of self-control and 
makes him a king of men because he is first of 
all a king over himself, 2 ruler of his fears and 
passions. 

And then having made them kings, Christ 
also makes them Priests. The Priesthood of 
believers refers to their service to the community. 
The function of a priest is by his prayers and 
sacrifices to bring his fellow worshippers neat 
to God. In that sense we can be all priests 
unto God. ‘Ye are a royal priesthood,” says 
St. Peter. By our characters and our service 
we can be priests to God in our day and genera- 


LOVE’S TENSES oe 


tion, making lives sweeter because we have 
lived, standing for Christ as an ‘“‘ incarnation 
up to date,” as Hugh Price Hughes used to say. 

In his Story of My Life, Mr. Ford tells a remark- 
able story of industrial success from a human 
point of view; but what is more beautiful by 
far in the book is that this thought of “‘ service ” 
runs through it like a golden thread. In all he 
did Mr. Ford strove to think that he was serving 
his employees and the community as well as 
himself, and thus he was led into many beautiful 
adventures of industry. 

Shall we not open our hearts afresh to this 
love of Christ which comes to us to-day amid 
the bread and the wine, saying, “I am among 
you as one that serveth’”? As we remember 
the past of Christ’s great love, shall we not 
rejoice in the fact that it is here present with us 
to-day as fresh and real as when it poured itself 
out for us on Calvary’s Cross. And shall we 
not resolve again to let it have its way with us, 
developing our life with true manhood under the 
spell of its constraining power, and so making © 


us “kings and priests unto God for ever.” 
18 


XX 


WORRY 
(For the Close of a Holiday Season) 


“ Fret not thyself, it tendeth only to evil-doing.”” 
—PsALM xxxvil. 8 (R.V.). 
THIS may seem a small thing, but, after all, life 
is made up of small things, and life is not small. 
It was not too small for the Psalmist to devote 
a whole psalm to, for you will notice that no 
less than three times over he advises men not 
to worry. “Fret not thyself because of evil- 
doets,”’ he says in the first verse, and again in 
the seventh, “Fret not thyself because of him 
who prospereth in his way,” and then in our 
text he repeats the injunction, adding what is a 
vety good reason for it. It does no good to 
anybody. You won’t make things a bit better 
by fretting, rather ten times worse, making 


youtself and everybody else miserable. “‘ Fret 
274 


WORRY 275 


not thyself, it tendeth only to evil.” But, 
indeed, the whole Psalm is just about worry, 
the causes, the evil and the cure of it. And if 
it be, as the inscription says, by David, he had 
many reasons to write it, when he looked at 
poor Saul, fretting his soul to madness in jealous 
hatred, and many reasons to lay its lesson of 
quiet waiting to heart as the angry javelin of 
the revengeful King quivered past into the wall 
ot he was hunted from place to place by his 
relentless hatred. ‘“‘ Commit thy ve unto aa 
Lord and He shall bring it to pass.” 

But who that has had amy experience of life, 
and any acquaintance with the human heart, will 
deny that the ancient poet was right in thus 
Wwatning men against fretfulness ? Times change, 
but the heart of man remains the same, and how 
many there are in this twentieth century of ours, 
with its worry and bustle, with its fever and 
fret, that are wearing their souls to pieces and 
making all around them miserable by giving way 
to this evil tendency. How many homes all 
atound us are being jarred all to pieces by this 
bad spirit! Perhaps it is the husband that is 


276 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


the slave and the tyrant of worry, for fretfulness 
is a disease that makes its victim both a slave and 
a tyrant. He comes home every other night 
with his soul like a porcupine, ready to bristle 
up at every moment. Either the cooking is not 
good, ort the dishes are too hot or too cold, or 
the children ate making a noise, or something 
else is wrong. Or perhaps it is nothing at all, for 
fretfulness can be roused without any cause 
apparently and the wotse it is, the more shadowy 
itsoccasion. Possibly it is the wife that is fretful ; 
and when the husband comes home at night, 
instead of a welcome he gets a wail if not a growl. 
She does not like this house, the people in this 
place ate not what she was accustomed to, the 
servant is very trying, the children have been 
unusually naughty, things are all going wrong. 
We need not prolong the story. The picture 
is too familiar ; but the result is that the bright- 
ness of home is gone, and if fretfulness grows 
into a habit it will invade the whole soul and 
make the heart like Saul’s, a chamber of gloomy 
thoughts from which faith in God and love to 
man ate alike expelled. 


WORRY 277 


Let us then on this Sunday when many of us 
return to our winter’s work with its thousand 
cates and worries, look at this subject which 
the Psalmist has brought before us—following 
out very much the thoughts which he suggests 
in his beautiful meditation; considering she 
causes, the curse and cure of Fretfulness. 


I. As to the cause of fretfulness, it must be said 
that, unlike anger, to which it has a feeble resem- 
blance, it has often no real cause at all. Anger 
may be worse than fretfulness because it is more 
violent, but it may be better than it because more 
just. A man may do well to be angry; he can 
fevcrmcG well eto be fretful) Anger, like” a 
thunderstorm, is soon over, but fretfulness 
dribbles on for ever like a leaky pipe. 

Therefore, though the Psalmist mentions here 
why men fret, he does not do so to excuse them, 
but only to show how foolish they are in so doing. 
One of the reasons, for example, why people 
fret is because of prosperity of others. TEnvy is a 
fruitful cause of fretting, and that is specially the 
case if those who are beating us in the race were 


278 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


much on a level with us at the start. It is a 
little hard to see our quondam equals shoot 
ahead while we are left behind, and still more 
so, if this success of theirs is won by illegitimate 
means. The boy or girl at school who sees 
another get a prize which they have a pretty 
good reason to think was won by cheating or 
undue favouritism, has a big fight not to be 
fretful and say “I won’t try again. That is 
not fair.” And that is just a picture of life. 
When we see the man of business rise to favour 
and fortune by unscrupulous if not dishonest 
means, when we see the success of the shoddy 
and the gains of the shady, when by foregoing 
what is mean and low we remain poor and un- 
noticed while he who never scruples at these 
things, who fawns and cringes on his employer, 
flatters and cajoles his clients, sails as close 
to the wind as it is possible for a man to sail 
without actually sailing into prison, when he, I 
say, stows gteat and rich and honoured, then it is 
alittle hard “to fret not because of evil-doets,” 
to tefrain from being envious at “ the prosperity 
of the wicked.” 


WORRY 279 


Hard, and yet as David says, What is the use 
of it? What do you ever gain by fretting ? 
Nothing but needless misery of soul. Wait till 
the end and the balance will all come out tight 
then. ‘The poet says he saw it in this life: “I 
have seen the wicked like a green bay tree— 
but he passed and was not and could not be 
found.” I must confess I have not myself seen 
it come out so neat as that. I have indeed seen 
the wicked pass in some cases, but, in most, he 
seemed to remain. He founded a family, built 
churches and orphanages, got into the Peerage 
and died at a good old age and had a long obituary 
notice in The Morning Post. 

But then, if I may say it without irreverence, 
I look further and deeper than this Psalm; I 
look further and deeper because I stand in the 
new light which my Master has cast on life. 
I remember that great word “ character,’ which 
Jesus exalted into such prominence when he 
said, ““ A man’s life consisteth not in the abun- 
dance of the things he possesseth ”—not in what 
he has, but what he is. I remember too that 
still greater word “immortality”? which He 


280 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


“brought to light.” Can we tell absolutely and 
confidently whether life has been a success till 
we look at it in that light? When I think on 
these things, I find it no difficult matter not to 
fret at the prosperity of the wicked. I say what 
He said of such people, “‘ They have their reward.” 

But it is much more difficult when the 
case is not merely the prosperousness of another 
but pain and poverty in ourselves. How many 
there are who spend their lives in a long fight 
with pain. How many who have a weaty battle 
to keep the head above water, the wolf from 
the door! One must not be too hatd on such 
people if they fret a little. The wise nurse does 
not scold her patient if she frets a little now and 
then. She knows that fretfulness is the fruit 
of sickness and tties to remove its cause. Yes, 
and yet even in these cases we must say with 
David, “ What is the good of it?” What do 
you ever get by it? Surely it only makes you 
wotse. “It tendeth only to evil.” 


II. Now that brings me in the second place 
to speak of the Curé of Fretfulness. 


WORRY 281 


Fretfulness not only does no good, it does 
positive harm. I have already spoken of the 
pain and misery which a fretful person spteads 
in a home, whether husband or wife, a son or 
daughter. Such folk come into a toom like a 
gust of East windand one is glad when they depart. 

But much mote serious tesults follow to the 
fretful man himself. It destroys his soul. It 
sours his spirit. It makes faith in God imposs- 
ible. It takes away all power of work and finally 
it may end as it did in poor Saul’s case in darkness 
and utter alienation from God. ‘Thete is an old 
Greek story of a man who was killed by envy. 
It was the custom then to erect statues to men 
in their lifetime, and one had been erected to 
a statesman who was this man’s lifelong rival and 
at length successful antagonist. He was filled 
with bitterness and one night determined to go 
out and knock it down. He pushed and pushed 
and at last got the thing shifted from its pedestal, 
crashing down on the city square, but as it fell it 
entangled himself and next morning they found 
his dead body beneath the object of his hatred. 

It is a patable of how envy destroys the soul * | 


282 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


of him who harbours it. I have known people, 
nominally Christian, who are living really in 
hell, a hell of misery kindled by their own 
murmuring and gloomy spirit; while there are 
others, not perhaps so bad as these who live in 
a kind of wailing, puling condition ; that makes 
you indeed sorry for them but glad when you 
ate able to say “‘ Good-bye.” 


How hurtful such lives ate as a witness for 
Christ! If your fretful man or woman ptofesses 
to be a Christian, and perhaps is a Christian, 
what a poor witness he is to the faith he pro- 
fesses!_ How can you expect others to sing the 
new song if you ate always drawling out on 
the minor key ? What a misery a fretful Christian 
is in a chutch if he happen to be much engaged 
in its wotk! He is never contented with any- 
thing. This man is not a Christian and that 
man is not a Christian, and there must bea com- 
plete weeding out of ninety per cent of the 
wotkers before things will be right. Perhaps 
he is not recognized ; he thinks he deserves and 
pethaps does really deserve more recognition 


WORRY 283 


than he has got; but the result is bitterness and 
uselessness. For such a spirit is not only hurtful 
to the man himself but it is hurtful to the work. 
Cheerfulness is the oxygen of the service of 
God, and without it there can be no healthy 
church. “‘ Stormy weather,’ says Spurgeon, 
“curdles the very cream of humanity,” and 
fretfulness in temper spells failure in service. 


III. And now I come in closing to speak of 
the Cure for Fretfulness. 

Rabbi Duncan used to say, “ When I am 
tempted to be despondent I go out to my garden 
and look at the flowers. Then I say with my 
Master, ‘ consider the lilies of the field,’ ‘ Begone, 
dull care, thou fruit of unbelief!’ ’? There is no 
doubt that a little more exercise, a little more of the 
open air, even if it did not suggest these thoughts 
of Rabbi Duncan, would do much to cure the 
fretfulness of many a man to-day, and especially 
many a woman. Fretfulness has as often a physical 
as a spiritual cause, and it is good Theology as 
well as good common sense to suggest that to 
many a little more fresh air, or even a cold bath, 


284 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


would do much to restore a cheerful spirit. But 
of course while we do not forget these lesser 
helps we do not forget also their limitations. 
These only touch the surface of things, some- 
thing more is needed to reach the root. Spiritual 
maladies need spiritual remedies, and it is trifling 
and wotse than trifling to suggest that these 
things alone can ever minister to a mind diseased. 
Miss Cholmondeley in one of her books well 
remarks that there is something overdone in the 
way in which people nowadays suggest a change 
as the only means of comfort to a mind diseased. 
“You would think,” she says, “that the only 
Book of Consolation nowadays is the Tourist’s 
Guide Book and that Murray was the Modern 
Bible. They change their skies but not their 
souls who cross the distant ocean.” Fretfulness 
will not be cured by these things alone. Some- 
thing more than that is needed if the peace that 
passeth understanding is to come down upon 
the soul. 

What is that P Perhaps the beautiful incident 
about Christ in the home of Bethany can put it 
better than any words of mine. ‘“‘ Martha, 


WORRY 285 


Martha, thou art cumbered about many things,” 
said Jesus to the worried Martha. ‘‘ But one 
thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen the good 
patt which shall not be taken away from her.” 
Christ never uses the word fretfulness at all 
in that conversation. He was too wise to sug- 
gest such a thing. But He has it clearly in His 
mind as the trouble of the elder sister and as 
clearly has He its remedy. It is, in a word, a 
deeper faith in God, a closer fellowship with } 
Christ, a stronger grasp of the comfort of the/ 
Holy Ghost. | 
There are men and women all around us who 
have ten thousand causes for fretfulness if ever 
there was a true cause for it, and yet they never 
fret. Someofyouhaveseenthem. Mournerswho 
have sutvived everything, even hope itself; incur- 
ables who daily pace the long corridors of pain in 
the vast hospital of this world; women like her 
who wrote that exquisite hymn of resignation : 


“When I survey life’s varied scene 
Amid the darkest hours, 
Sweet rays of comfort shine between 
And thorns are mixed with flowers.” 


286 DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


The author of that hymn was a woman whose 
life was a ttiad of bereavement, disappointment 
and weakness; and yet was able to sing at the 
endsonits 

““ Give me a calm and tranquil heart, 
From every murmur free, 
The blessings of Thy grace impart 
And let me live to Thee.” 

When we reflect that her resignation was no 
sentimental outburst of momentary emotion, but 
the daily litany of a life which to the end made 
God’s statutes “‘ her songs in the house of her 
pilgrimage,” we are conducted to the sovereign 
cute for wotty. It is faith that cures fret. Other 
subsidiary helps may be tried and are well worthy 
the trial, but it is faith in God, in His love revealed 
in Jesus Christ that brings the soul to that peace, 
which garrisons the believing soul and keeps it 
calm amidst the encompassing hosts of life’s 
cates and sorrows. 

You all remember that young man in ancient 
times who came rushing down from the top of 
the house crying out to the prophet, “ Master! 
Master! We ate undone. The Syrians have 


WORRY 287 


suttounded the city. All hope that we can be 
saved is taken away. Prepare for death or 
slavery!” But the prophet calmly answered, 
“Open the young man’s eyes that he may see,” 
and “Behold the mountain round about was 
filled with chariots and hotses of fire.” ‘“‘ There 
are mote with us,” he added, *‘ than are with 
them.” 

That is the way to meet your frets. Meet 
them with prayer. Pray that God may open 
your eyes that you may see the spiritual forces 
that are all on the side of those who look to God. 
Then the wotties and cares will “ fold their tents 
like the Arabs and silently steal away.” 

Christ will come over the tempest of your 
fears and say, “ Peace be still,” and there wiil 
be “a great calm.” 


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